INDONESIA - Thousands of people are evacuating their homes in Indonesia after a volcano erupted in east Java. Mount Kelud spewed ash and debris over a large area, including the city of Surabaya, about 130km (80 miles) away. Two people died after their houses collapsed under the weight of ash, officials said. Some towns were said to be covered by 4cm (1.6 in) of ash. Three major airports in Surabaya, Solo and Yogyakarta were forced to shut down because of low visibility. Indonesia lies across a series of geological fault-lines and is prone to frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. There are around 130 active volcanoes in the country.

Earlier this month, Mount Sinabung on the island of Sumatra erupted, killing at least 14 people.

MIDDLE EAST - As the Iranian nuclear deal begins to take effect and international pressure on the regime continues to diminish, Gulf nations have begun re-establishing diplomatic and economic relations with their once-distant neighbour. Saudi Arabia continues to find itself pitted against Iran, both on the battlefield in Syria and at economic conferences in Davos. And while the Kingdom enjoys relative economic prosperity, it has taken steps to lessen its reliance on its massive oil resources, perhaps to the benefit of investors. As Saudi Arabia’s influence over the Gulf further erodes, the Kingdom must continue to invest in projects that diversify its revenues and resources, and sustain its competitive advantage. Iran may be the talk of the town, but Saudi’s strategy may prove just as pivotal to the future of the Gulf.

USA - Academic research published a decade ago suggested that high-fructose corn syrup, the popular food additive, might be a less healthy sweetener than sugar and perhaps even partly responsible for rising obesity and diabetes. Stung by such assertions, which the corn industry insisted were false, farming giants including Archer Daniels Midland, of Decatur, Illinois, and Cargill, of Minneapolis, began an effort through their Washington trade group, the Corn Refiners Association, to rebut these studies and to persuade the Food and Drug Administration to declare its syrup “natural” and allow a more approachable product name, like “corn sugar.”

USA - By the power of his pen... President Obama gives minimum-wage-earning Federal employees (and physically and mentally handicapped workers) a 39% pay hike to $10.10 (and there's nothing you can do about it) to "benefit hundreds of thousands of people." We suspect that the president will remind us to [sign up for] the new "myRA" program and its benefits and how we should all tell our young friends to sign up for Obamacare too.

BELGIAN - If Britain had the same laws as Belgium and used euthanasia on the same per capita basis as Belgian doctors it would mean 8,592 people being medically killed every year. Would that be tolerable? It does seem pretty incredible that Laurette Onkelinx, Belgium’s health minister, did not bother to attend a parliament debate on extending euthanasia to children last night. But I cannot understand how people can remain indifferent to the scale of medical euthanasia as it is carried out in Belgium and the Netherlands. European societies outlaw capital punishment but allow doctors or panels of doctors the power to give death, often with little public scrutiny.

UK - George Osborne has categorically ruled out any future UK government joining a currency union with an independent Scotland, leaving Alex Salmond's plans to share the pound in tatters. The Chancellor used a speech in Edinburgh to say: "If Scotland walks away from the UK, it walks away from the pound." "Sharing the pound is not in the interests of the people of Scotland or the people of the UK," he said.

USA - Hell-bent on arming opposition forces in Syria — despite strong evidence that they’re run by Islamic terrorists — John McCain displayed behavior unbecoming of a United States Senator during a recent meeting with Syrian Christian leaders touring Capitol Hill. The delegation of Syrian clergy came to Washington to raise awareness among lawmakers of the growing crisis among the region’s minority Christian community. Christians make up about 10% of the Syrian population and they are being targeted and ruthlessly murdered by radical elements of the rebel forces, according to the visiting church officials. But Senator McCain, an Arizona Republican, evidently doesn’t want to hear negative stories about the rebels he’s working to arm. So he stormed out of a closed-door meeting with the Syrian clergy officials last week.

EUROPE - Everything that we warned about in "There May Be Only Painful Ways Out Of The Crisis" back in September of 2011, and everything that the depositors and citizens of Cyprus had to live through, seems on the verge of going continental. In a nutshell, and in Reuters' own words, "the savings of the European Union's 500 million citizens could be used to fund long-term investments to boost the economy and help plug the gap left by banks since the financial crisis, an EU document says." What is left unsaid is that the "usage" will be on a purely involuntary basis, at the discretion of the "union", and can thus best be described as confiscation.

USA - The biggest news story in the United States right now is the "historic ice storm" that is hammering the South. Travel will be a nightmare, schools and businesses will be closed, and hundreds of thousands of people will lose power. In fact, it is being projected that some people could be without power for up to a week. But at the end of the day, the truth is that this ice storm is just an inconvenience. Yes, the lives of millions of Americans will be disrupted for a few days, but soon the ice will melt and life will be back to normal. Unfortunately, it doesn't take much for people to start behaving like crazed lunatics. The winter weather is causing average Americans to ransack grocery stores, fight over food items and even pull guns on one another. If this is how people will behave during a temporary weather emergency, how will they behave when we are facing a real disaster?

GERMANY - The current debt crisis in Europe evokes painful memories of the German hyperinflation. Price increases began with the start of World War I in 1914 and ended in disaster in 1923. The event still influences sentiment about monetary policy in the country today.

GERMANY - All of a sudden, Germany says it wants to be a grown-up. “There are people who use Germany’s guilt in the past as an excuse for withdrawal and laziness,” President Joachim Gauck said at the opening of the 50th Munich Security Conference late last month. “This restraint can lead to a notion of being privileged, and if this is the case, I will always criticize it.”

LUXEMBOURG - For opponents of the EU − who complain that it is too big, too grandiose and too costly − the European Court of Justice in Luxemborg encapsulates all that is wrong. It is a modern day Tower of Babel. Stretching 24 storeys into the air, the twin golden skyscrapers − the tallest in Luxembourg − were built to house more than 1,000 translators and interpreters.

MYANMAR - With his current visit to Myanmar [formerly known as Burma], German President Gauck is bolstering the Western geostrategic standing in its power struggle with China. Gauck, who arrived for talks on Sunday, will officially inaugurate the Goethe Institute and a German business field office.

USA - After leaving more than half a million customers without power across the Southeast, Winter Storm Pax is finally moving away from the Deep South. "The ice storm was as bad as we expected," said weather.com senior meteorologist Jon Erdman. "One inch or more of ice accumulation was reported in at least seven South Carolina counties, as well as Richmond County, Georgia" In North Carolina, snowfall led to a disastrous commute Wednesday afternoon in Raleigh and Charlotte. Cars slid off roads and heavy traffic led to gridlock, forcing some drivers to sit in hours of slow commutes or abandon their cars. Other states dealt with heavy freezing rain that felled trees and power lines, creating a scary scene in a heavily wooded region.

USA - Lake Superior hasn’t completely frozen over in two decades. But an expert on Great Lakes ice says there’s a “very high likelihood” that the three-quadrillion-gallon lake will soon be totally covered with ice thanks to this winter’s record-breaking cold. The ice cover on the largest freshwater lake in the world hit a 20-year record of 91 percent on February 5, 1994. Jay Austin, associate professor at the Large Lakes Observatory in Duluth, Minnesota, told CNSNews.com that he expects that record will be broken this winter when the most northern of the Great Lakes becomes totally shrouded in ice.