Trump said that leaders should use their resources to keep their people safe, rebuild their communities, and empower them economically. “When people are forgotten, the world becomes fractured. Only by hearing and responding to the voices of the forgotten can we create a bright future that is truly shared by all,” he said.

Trump’s speech was serious, featuring cheerleading rhetoric encouraging global investment in the United States and relentlessly promoting his tax cut bill as reinventing American economic competitiveness. “America is roaring back, and now is the time to invest in the future of America,” he said. The president also argued that his America First message does not ignore the role of the United States in the world.

“America First does not mean America alone,” he said. “When the United States grows, so does the world.” He also promised to continue seeking free but fair trade in the United States, warning that the days of other countries’ taking advantage of America were over. “We cannot have free and open trade if some countries exploit the system at the expense of others,” he said. “We support free trade, but it needs to be fair, and it needs to be reciprocal.”

Orban said there was agreement among the Visegrad Group, which also includes Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, that it was in their interests for Europe to be strong while preserving the independence of individual countries instead of creating a "United States of Europe." "We are pro-European politicians, and our goal is for Europe to be stronger," he said, adding: "The question is, will the European Union have enough of the good-quality leadership needed for us to achieve these aims."

Orban said the migration crisis had made it more difficult to renew Europe. He called UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' proposals about a global agreement on migration "dangerous." "It's not worth it for the European Union to try to reach a common position at the UN because we won't be partners in this," Orban said, adding that Central European nations "want to stick to our tolerant, Christian way of life."

For his part, [Slovakia Prime minister] Fico said he belonged to a group of prime ministers who "do not wish to see Muslim communities being created in our own countries, which have Christian roots."

However, these attitudes have been articulated more openly for some time now. The internet plays a major role here. In the social networks we find a verbal lack of inhibition which is dangerous, especially on the far-right of the political spectrum. Therefore, it is good that the Network Enforcement Act now provides an instrument to better prevent "hate speech".

Unfortunately, however, an anti-Israeli attitude is also spreading in society. It is then no longer a matter of factual criticism of Israel, but Israel's right to exist is called into question, or Jews in general are held liable for the policies of the Israeli government. That's anti-Semitism.

No longer. Last week the Pentagon issued a new national defence strategy that put China and Russia above jihadism as the main threat to America. This week the chief of Britain’s general staff warned of a Russian attack. Even now America and North Korea are perilously close to a conflict that risks dragging in China or escalating into nuclear catastrophe.

As our special report this week on the future of war argues, powerful, long-term shifts in geopolitics and the proliferation of new technologies are eroding the extraordinary military dominance that America and its allies have enjoyed. Conflict on a scale and intensity not seen since the second world war is once again plausible. The world is not prepared.

The pressing danger is of war on the Korean peninsula, perhaps this year. Donald Trump has vowed to prevent Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s leader, from being able to strike America with nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, a capability that recent tests suggest he may have within months, if not already. Among many contingency plans, the Pentagon is considering a disabling pre-emptive strike against the North’s nuclear sites. Despite low confidence in the success of such a strike, it must be prepared to carry out the president’s order should he give it.

Even a limited attack could trigger all-out war. Analysts reckon that North Korean artillery can bombard Seoul, the South Korean capital, with 10,000 rounds a minute. Drones, midget submarines and tunnelling commandos could deploy biological, chemical and even nuclear weapons. Tens of thousands of people would perish; many more if nukes were used. Without America’s commitment to the international order and the hard power to defend it against determined and able challengers, the dangers will grow. If they do, the future of war could be closer than you think.

The clock which serves as a metaphor for how close humanity is to destroying the planet was moved forward by 30 seconds, to as near as it has ever been to the hour of the apocalypse. The last time the clock was at two minutes to midnight was in 1953 when the United States and Soviet Union were testing hydrogen bombs.

"In this year's discussions, nuclear issues took centre stage once again," said Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. She mentioned new testing by North Korea, an enhanced commitment to nuclear weapons in China, Pakistan and India, and "unpredictability" embodied by the US president in tweets and statements. She said: “The actions and policies of the nuclear-armed states are winding the Doomsday Clock towards midnight.

"We have been lucky to avoid conflict through intentional or accidental means, but recent posturing and the false alarms in Hawaii and Japan show our luck is about to run out if we don’t move quickly. A security based on luck is reckless and foolish; it’s exactly what the nuclear states have now."

The Doomsday Clock was created in 1947 and its time has changed 20 times since then, ranging from two minutes to midnight in 1953 to 17 minutes before midnight in 1991. Last year it moved from three minutes before midnight to two-and-a-half minutes. Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), said we are currently heading to catastrophe.

"And I think that really is the message," Trump told pool reporters who trailed him at each scheduled meeting at the gathering of bigwigs in the snowy Alpine town. Trump also renewed his public pitch for investors to pour money into the US. "It's been going really well. A lot of people are coming back to the United States. We are seeing tremendous investment," he said."And today's been a very exciting day, very great day and great for our country."   

Trump landed on Thursday in Switzerland, where his outsized personality and determination to push an "America First" agenda was upending the annual Davos conference. "Our economy is now booming and with all I am doing, will only get better… Our country is finally WINNING again!" he wrote. Trump's Commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, has warned new US trade actions could be coming.

But Alibaba CEO Jack Ma warned here: "Don't use trade as a weapon." He added: "It's so easy to launch a trade war, but it's so difficult to stop the disaster of this war." There is broad concern in European capitals that 2018 could be the year Trump's bark on trade turns into bite, as he considers punitive measures on steel and threatens to end the 90s-era North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico.

Why did water levels in these wells some 3,800 miles away from the earthquake's epicenter change? Vibrations that move through the earth called seismic waves are the culprit. Seismic waves are depicted by the upward and downward lines on seismographs used to detect earthquakes around the world.

"Water levels in wells respond to the seismic-wave induced expansion and contraction of the aquifer tapped by the well, in turn causing step or oscillatory fluid-pressure changes," the USGS says. The changes in groundwater levels are often seen hundreds, or even thousands, of miles away from an earthquake's epicenter.

After an 8.5 magnitude earthquake near Alaska in 1964 water level changes were reported at 716 wells in the United States, according to the USGS. Occasionally, changes can be extreme. A 5.2 magnitude northwest Pennsylvania temblor in 1998 rendered dry about 120 wells for local homes for about three months.

In recent years, this forum for Big Thought, aka the Munich Security Conference, has quietly become the event for the world’s great and the good. Its alter-ego, the World Economic Forum, held this week in the remote Alpine redoubt of Davos, grabs more media attention, with its coterie of Hollywood stars, Silicon Valley prominence and Russian oligarchs. Problem is, despite Davos’ lofty declarations of purpose, critics say there’s no real there, there.

“Munich is still the jewel in the crown of the international security conference circuit and the one that is guaranteed to make headlines,” said Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Danish premier and NATO secretary-general who’s in Davos this week. “Munich is similar to Davos in many aspects: It’s a whirlwind of events and networking where the fringe is often just as interesting as the speeches in the main hall.”

​By rejecting Davos’ jet-set ostentation, however, Munich has made itself the thinking person’s preferred destination. “Munich is the place to go to hear bold policies announced, new ideas and approaches tested, old partnerships reaffirmed and new ones formed,” Biden, a regular since 1980, gushed while he was still US vice president. “Like no other global forum, today’s Munich connects European leaders and thinkers with their peers from across the world.”

The Munich Security Conference 2018 will take place from 16 to 18 February 2018

The 2018 Italian general election is due to take place on March 4, after the country’s Parliament was dissolved by President Sergio Mattarella in late December. The leader of Italy’s traditional far-right ‘Lega Nord’ party hopes that his ‘Italians first’ slogan will sway enough voters to land him in office. Salvini is betting on Italians’ anti-migrant sentiments to bring him to power as part of a center-right alliance led by Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (Go Italy!).

Following Trump’s somewhat unexpected victory in the US elections, a number of anti-immigrant political parties in Europe have shot to unprecedented prominence. The leader of the National Front, the right-wing populist party in France, Marine Le Pen, came in second place during the presidential election in the country last year. The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party also made big gains and entered parliament for the first time in its history with 12.6 percent of the vote in the German election.

She slammed “protectionism” and said that a hundred years after World War One leaders had “sleep-walked” into another catastrophe, with a resurgence of national democracy and a faltering of the European Union (EU). “Have we actually learned the lessons of history? We haven’t really,” she said, claiming the supranational projects that followed World War Two were fading. “We see populism on the rise, we see a polarising atmosphere, and a polarising state of affairs.”

Nations seeking to close their borders with physical barriers and guards are a large problem, she added. “Ever since the Roman Empire, ever since the Chinese Wall, we know that shutting ourselves off doesn’t help to protect your borders. You also need good cooperation with your neighbours, you need good agreements, valid agreements, that are respected.”