UK - A minor earthquake with a 4.4 magnitude has affected parts of Wales and England. The quake was felt over all of Wales, most of western England, as far east as London and as far north as the southern edge of the Lake District, the British Geological Survey (BGS) said. The epicentre was approximately 20km north-north-east of Swansea and at a depth of 7.4km, it added. Roger Musson, from the BGS, said it was the largest earthquake in mainland Britain for the last 10 years - since one with a magnitude of 5.2 struck in 2008 in Market Rasen, Lincolnshire. “Well this confirms it! 4.4 magnitude earthquake and we felt it during a talk on continental rifting up in Liverpool. What a place to feel it… in a room full of geologists! It’s like being around children at Christmas”.

AUSTRALIA - A red alert has been issued in Australia as Cyclone Kelvin hammers the Western coast with deadly winds of up to 150 kilometres per hour, as emergency services warn people are “in danger”. The alert was issued at 6.44am (local time) and warned people in or near Bidyadanga to Sandfire including Bidyadanga to look for shelter immediately. The Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) said there was a threat to lives and homes, and people were in danger and needed to act immediately. A yellow alert remained in place for people between Broome and Pardoo Roadhouse.

GERMANY - Something strange is happening in the land of boredom. Until last Friday, German politics seemed neat and orderly. The next "grand coalition" (or GroKo) was to be formed - with familiar faces, modest projects, no surprises. The planned third edition of the pact between the conservative Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) under Angela Merkel's chancellorship didn't promise Germany, Europe and the rest of the world much, but at least it seemed to guarantee stability.

ISRAEL - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday said Israel will not accept any limitation on its activities in Syria and will continue to defend its citizens, ahead of a visit to the Munich Security Conference, which he called “the most important security convention in the world.”

SOUTH KOREA - The games have begun. The younger sister of North Korea’s ruler Kim Jong-un has captured the attention of the media, while US Vice President Mike Pence was mocked as a dud, even undiplomatic. The two Koreas are engaging each other. This makes the Washington foreign policy swamp fume.

USA - As badly as ‘abortion-on-demand’ offends my sensibilities as a human being, it’s even worse because I know that the putrid Marxists who push it are also blatant racists that I wish more of my African-American friends would realize. The abortion industry dived to a new low recently with billboards in Cleveland actually claiming that murdering an unborn baby is “good medicine.” Talk about your propaganda campaigns. And as usual, the signs are targeting black communities.

USA - A reported shooting at a South Florida high school on Wednesday marks the country’s 18th school shooting of 2018, just 45 days into the year. That’s an average of one school shooting every 60 hours thus far in 2018, more than double the number of school shootings recorded in any of the previous three years in that same period. Those numbers are according to data compiled by the gun control advocacy organization Everytown for Gun Safety, which defines a school shooting as any time a firearm is discharged on or around a campus.

AFRICA - No conflict since the 1940s has been bloodier, yet few have been more completely ignored. Estimates of the death toll in Congo between 1998 and 2003 range from roughly 1 million to more than 5 million — no one counted the corpses. Taking the midpoint, the cost in lives was higher than that in Syria, Iraq, Vietnam or Korea. Yet scarcely any outsider has a clue what the fighting was about or who was killing whom. Which is a tragedy, because the great war at the heart of Africa might be about to start again.

TONGA - Tonga’s century-old parliament building has been knocked to the ground in the worst storm to hit the island nation in more than 60 years. The Category 4 tropical storm struck the country overnight, lifting roofs off homes and knocking down power lines and trees. Tonga's National Emergency Management Office (NEMO) said there is no house left undamaged by the tropical storm, according to Radio NZ. “I’ve been involved in disaster responses for 30-plus years and it’s the worst situation I have been in,” Graham Kenna from NEMO said. A former member of parliament told RNZ that almost all the crops on the island of Eua had been destroyed.

UK - Strong tremors have struck near Guam, Japan and Alaska within the Pacific plate as fears of Ring of Fire activity return. The US island territory of Guam was struck by four earthquakes in the early hours of Tuesday as magnitude 5.7, 5.6, 5.4 and 4.9 quakes shook the region. The earthquake activity returns after a magnitude six quake struck 10km deep off the Northern Mariana Islands. No immediate tsunami warning was triggered. The Northern Mariana Islands have a population of 55,023 while Guam had 162,742 people living on the island in 2016. Territories on the Pacific Ring of Fire, where tectonic plates meet, see frequent seismic and volcanic activity.

GERMANY - Angela Merkel’s hopes of finally stitching together a coalition government in Germany have been thrown into chaos after civil war broke out amongst her Social Democrat allies following the resignation of their leader Martin Schulz. Fresh national elections are moving closer to reality with the SPD deeply divided over its support for backing Ms Merkel throughout a fourth term in office.

UK - The monarch should not be overthrown as the head of the Commonwealth, a royal expert has fumed, following the revelation secret talks were underway to replace the Queen when she dies. Richard Fitzwilliams hailed Britain as the nation which binds all but two of its 53 members, as he warned the monarch should not be replaced with rotating headship of the group as it could have “disastrous consequences”. 

USA - President Donald Trump had a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday in which they discussed the possibility of a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as the North Korean nuclear crisis.

USA - The risk of inter-state conflict is higher now than at any time since the end of the Cold War, according to US Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats. The most immediate threats over the next year will come from North Korea and from “Saudi-Iranian use of proxies in their rivalry,” Coats said during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday. “At the same time, the threat of state and non-state use of weapons of mass destruction will continue to grow,” he added.

USA - As the wealthy continue sucking the country dry, the question now isn’t if the US will cease to provide a decent standard of living for its people. Rather it is how many people will be sacrificed on the way down. In America, the richest nation in the world when measured by raw GDP, children are getting sick from living by open pools of raw sewage.