“Nowhere is the urgency of peace, security, and freedom being more tested than in Iran,” Haley declared: “By the thousands, Iranian citizens are taking to the streets to protest the oppression of their own government,” she said, adding: “The government of Iran is actively attempting to stop social media and other forms of communication that allow their citizens’ voices to be heard,” Haley said.

“So we want to help amplify the voices of the Iranian people,” she went on: “And in reference to the Supreme Leader, quote: ‘Feel some shame. Let go of the country,’” she added. “Those are not my words,” Haley stressed. “Those are not the words of the United States. Those are the words of the brave people of Iran.”

President Trump has long boasted about bringing his business acumen to his role in leading the United States of America, but even he cannot stop an impending economic meltdown, former Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul told RT.

“The way I see it is in economic terms,” Paul said. “My understanding is that it wasn’t our military build-up in the United States that brought the Soviet system down. What happened was the Soviets were working with a system that we – people in free markets – saw as totally unviable.”

Talking about his beliefs in Austrian economics, Paul said communism, along with fascism, socialism and even Keynesianism (a form of economics popular after WWII) were not viable systems and will eventually fail, and the same could happen to the United States and its militarism.

“We’re gonna have a sudden, cataclysmic end which is sort of what happened to the Soviet system. It’s not going to be identical, there was a succession movement and some of those countries left the Soviet system. Our states probably aren’t going to break up, but I do sincerely believe that we will no longer be able to afford our empire around the world.”

Pope Francis talks a good game about humility in discourse and openness, but that’s a bit like when Venezuela speaks about people’s democracy. It seems to be an empty slogan for a very angry, not exceptionally bright or subtle South American politician who happens to have found himself in a position with a huge bully pulpit which allows him to express an anti-American, anti-free market, really anti-Western worldview that seems to make a fetish out of poverty and loves the idea of global government overruling the wishes of voters.

Pope Francis’ “open borders” advocacy for the admission of economic migrants and ostensible refugees, said Zmirak, is solely targeted at America and Europe. The pope’s use of biblical anecdotes towards this end, he added, amounts to the use of “hysterical leftist agitprop”:

He seems to want open borders for Western countries. He never talks about Mexico needing to let in everybody for El Salvador. No, it’s the United States that doesn’t have a right to have borders. Europe doesn’t have a right to have borders. The most shocking thing, back in 2013, he went to the city of Lampedusa in Sicily, a little town, a little place, it is so overwhelmed with economic migrants from North Africa that the migrants now outnumber the residents of the city.

He gave a talk in 2013 where he compared Europeans who didn’t want to accept Muslim migrants, he compared them to Cain who killed his brother in the Garden of Eden and Herod who slaughtered the children of Bethlehem. This is not rational discourse. This is not theology. This is hysterical leftist agitprop of the kind that you read in Venezuelan government newspapers.

The Japanese central bank is now one of the largest owners of Japanese equities. Central banks, which are supposed to provide economic stability, have created a massive fraud. Throughout the Western world politics has degenerated into fraud. No government serves the public’s interest.

Except for some former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe, European governments have defied the will of the people by admitting vast numbers of refugees from Washington’s wars and others pretending to be refugees. The European governments further imperil their citizens with their support for Washington’s rising aggression toward Russia. The universal failure of democratic politics is leading directly to war.

From the perspective of today, it is unlikely that the New Year will be a happy one. Nowhere in the West is there a sign of leadership toward peace and the well-being of humanity.

Water officials carry out the first of their regular ritual winter snow measurements before news cameras on Wednesday. Plunging rods into snowpacks to measure the snow depth, water managers use the event to acquaint Californians with the state of the water supply. It's a crucial question in a semi-arid state with the US's biggest state economy, agricultural industry and population.

In a normal year, nearly two-thirds of Californians' water supply starts as snow in the Sierras. Snowpack in the Sierras, which supplies a steady flow of water in good years as the snow melts, stood Tuesday at one-fourth of normal for this point in the year.

Kirishima, Japan

One of Japan’s less known but most active volcanoes, Kirishima, is a group of several volcanic cones with eruptions recorded on and off since 742. An eruption at one of these cones, Shinmoedake, in 2011 was the largest at Kirishima for more than 50 years. Shinmoedake erupted for the first time in six years in October, with white plumes rising 200 metres above the crater rim. Presently, the alert level remains elevated.

Merapi, Indonesia

Merapi is one of the most dangerous volcanoes in Indonesia due to its frequent eruptions and densely populated slopes. With a death toll of nearly 400 people, its 2010 eruption is so far the deadliest of the 21st century. One may argue that another eruption of Merapi is overdue, although there are no immediate signs of increased volcanic activity or unrest.

Öræfajökull, Iceland

This ice-covered volcano has erupted twice since the early settlement of Iceland, including the country’s largest-ever explosive eruption in 1362 and another in 1727-28. In both cases the eruptions were followed by massive and lethal flooding, as meltwater from subglacial lakes on the mountain were suddenly released.

Popocatépetl, Mexico

Mexico’s “smoking mountain”, lies 70km south-east of Mexico City and is the country’s most active volcano. The volcano is currently erupting – as it has done so intermittently since 2005 – with lava dome growth, explosions, ash plumes up to a few kilometres high and minor ash fall in surrounding areas.

Villarrica, Chile

Snow-covered Villarrica volcano is one of only a small number of volcanoes around the world with an active lava lake. A gradual increase in seismic and lava lake activity, producing lava fountains up to 150 metres high, have been documented since mid-November 2017.

Kilauea, US

Kilauea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island has spewed basaltic lava almost continuously for 35 years and there is no reason to expect this eruption will end any time soon. The volcano continues to erupt at its summit and from the Puʻu ʻOʻo vent on its East Rift Zone, producing lava flows that occasionally enter the ocean.

So these are some of the volcanoes that will need to be monitored closely over the next weeks and months. But volcanic unrest can also start suddenly at dormant volcanoes such as Hekla in Iceland which, based on its past record of decades of quiescence followed by sudden huge eruptions, may awake with little warning.

Mrs Von der Leyen and Mr De Maizière are the only ministers to have served throughout Mrs Merkel’s 12-year tenure, Mrs Von der Leyen, a mother of seven, began as minster for family in 2005. She was minister for work in 2009 to 2013 and then moved to defence. She favours a federal United States of Europe and would make a more willing partner than Mrs Merkel for the reforms to integrate the eurozone being pushed by President Macron of France.

She is the daughter of the prominent CDU politician Ernst Albrecht, a former director-general of the European Commission. She grew up in Brussels, studied at the London School of Economics and later qualified as a doctor at the University of Hanover.

As defence secretary she has extended Germany’s military engagement by supplying arms to Kurdish and Iraqi forces fighting Islamic State. She has also expanded the German army for the first time since the Cold War.