AUSTRIA - Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said Tuesday that he aimed to ease east-west tensions within the European Union, as his new right-wing government welcomed Hungary's incendiary Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Vienna. "In particular since the start of the migrant crisis (in 2015) tensions have grown in the European Union," Kurz told a joint news conference with Orban in the Austrian capital.

USA - By now, you may have heard that the US is experiencing an opioid epidemic. The number of Americans who overdose on opioids has quadrupled since 1999. More than 500,000 people have died from opioid overdoses from 2010 to 2015. President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a national public health emergency in 2017 as CDC numbers reveal 64,000 deaths from opioid overdose in 2016.

USA - Inserted in a sweeping House bill introduced earlier this month called Securing America’s Future Act of 2018 is the establishment of a new biometric National ID card for all Americans that has privacy activists sounding alarms. Introduced by Representative Bob Goodlatte, Republican for Virginia, H.R. 4760 encompasses issues such as education, Homeland Security and the military. Buried in the 400-page legislation is the new mandatory national identification system in which citizens would be required to carry a government-approved ID containing “biometric features.” The bill states that anyone seeking employment in the country must have the card.

USA - Over one billion people, including many millions of children, women and refugees, globally lack any form of officially recognized identification. Without an identity, individuals are often invisible — unable to vote, access healthcare, open a bank account, or receive an education — and bear higher risk for trafficking. Without accurate population data, public and private organizations struggle to broadly and accurately deliver the most basic human services. A unique convergence of trends provides an unprecedented opportunity to make a coordinated, concerted push towards the goal of universal digital identity.

USA - Black Americans are the most supportive group in the United States of dramatically lower legal immigration levels, down from where the US currently admits more than 1 million legal immigrants a year, a new poll reveals. According to a detailed Harvard-Harris poll, black Americans are more likely than any other demographic group to support lower yearly legal immigration levels, down to a fourth of current immigration levels. When asked, “In your opinion, about how many legal immigrants should be admitted to the US each year,” 48 percent of black Americans said they would like to see between only one and 250,000 legal immigrants brought to the US a year.

ISRAEL - Cybersecurity experts sounded a dire note at a Tel Aviv conference Tuesday, saying 2017 was the worst year yet for cyber-attacks globally and the good guys are still woefully unprepared. Most institutions and companies are using outdated protections, and are struggling to get even the basics in place against attacks that are becoming more daring and aggressive, both Israeli and international experts said. “Winter is coming,” warned Yigal Unna, the newly appointed director general at the Israel National Cyber Directorate, at Israel’s 2018 Cybertech Conference. The cyber-attack surface is “getting wider” and the risk is “getting darker” with hackers motivated by both financial and political purposes. As more devices get connected, “malicious actors” get an advantage.

EUROPE - The European Union’s trade war with Donald Trump has reached boiling point after Brussels pledged to “react swiftly and appropriately” to the US President’s threats to restrict European imports. EU Commission spokesman Margaritas Schinas said it was ready to retaliate after Mr Trump attacked the bloc for its “very unfair trade policy” towards the United States. 

UK - Theresa May’s Tory party is in turmoil. Britain voted for a split from the European Union which Downing Street is now being accused of failing to deliver – by those both outside and inside Number 10. Political infighting is tearing a hole in the “strong and stable” facade, and now, May is facing a potential vote of no confidence.

UK - Prime Minister Theresa May could face a vote of no confidence if she doesn’t offer more clarity on leaving the EU, senior Tories have warned. MPs are growing restless over the future of a Brexit deal. Pro-brexit Tories are in open revolt, and others are warning the PM she needs to shape up or ship out. Unless she takes a firmer leadership approach, she could be toppled. “She’s as vulnerable as she’s ever been,” one backbencher told the Guardian. “She’s got to make a decision.”

USA - Just days after Twitter took it upon themselves to remind the public that the Russians were responsible for President Donald Trump's 2016 electoral victory, a statement provided by Twitter's head of public policy to the UK Parliament appears to be saying the exact opposite about suspected Russian interference in the Brexit vote.

USA - Around 2012, something started going wrong in the lives of teens. In just the five years between 2010 and 2015, the number of US teens who felt useless and joyless – classic symptoms of depression – surged 33 percent in large national surveys. Teen suicide attempts increased 23 percent. Even more troubling, the number of 13- to 18-year-olds who committed suicide jumped 31 percent.

USA - Florida lawmakers are now pushing a totalitarian medical police state law that would deny a public education to children who aren’t injected with the extremely toxic and risky HPV vaccine. SB 1551, also being deceptively called the “Women’s Cancer Prevention Act,” mandates HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccines in school-aged children, revoking medical choice rights from parents and invoking state-sponsored coercion to force children to be subjected to extremely risky medical interventions, even against the wishes of their parents. The HPV vaccine has been known to cause some of the worst adverse side effects.

VATICAN - The Holocaust was fueled by hate but was made possible by indifference, Pope Francis said Monday in an address at the Vatican. Speaking before participants in a conference on the responsibility of States, institutions and individuals in the struggle against anti-Semitism and crimes associated with anti-Semitic hatred, the pope underscored the wider complicity of a society that sometimes turns a blind eye to the evils being perpetrated around us. The enemy against which we fight “is not only hatred in all of its forms,” Francis said, “but even more fundamentally, indifference; for it is indifference that paralyzes and impedes us from doing what is right even when we know that it is right.”

NORTH KOREA - North Korea suddenly canceled an upcoming joint “cultural event” with South Korea on Monday while complaining about “biased” and “insulting” South Korean media coverage. The cancellation marks a significant setback in the highly touted “thawing” of relations with the outlaw Communist nation. Many observers both inside and beyond South Korea have been worried that the North’s sudden overtures ahead of the Winter Olympics are merely a delaying tactic, or worse, an effort to fracture the international coalition aligned against its nuclear weapons program by pretending it is willing to talk.

SAUDI ARABIA - A rare snowstorm has swept in to the Saudi Arabian desert turning the sand white as the Middle East is hit by a freak Polar blast. Incredible photos show the Tabuk region in the north west, known for its blazing heat, covered in a blanket of snow as temperatures plummeted below freezing. The freak weather is totally unexpected with temperatures normally hitting around 20C, traditionally the cold season in the Arab country.  Snow also fell in Syria, Iran and Lebanon, with some areas buried under 4 feet.