GERMANY - The Ukrainian crisis is important in itself, but the behavior it has elicited from Germany is perhaps more important. Berlin directly challenged Ukraine's elected president for refusing to tighten relations with the European Union and for mistreating Ukrainians who protested his decision. In challenging President Viktor Yanukovich, Berlin also challenged Russia, a reflection of Germany's recent brazen foreign policy.

GERMANY - Call it the Spider-Man Doctrine: With great power comes great responsibility. Enunciated not by Stan Lee but by Germany's President Joachim Gauck in a speech at last week's Munich Security Conference, this sentiment made front page news all over Europe. Why? Because Mr Gauck urged Germans to fundamentally rethink their attitude toward international affairs in general and international security in particular.

USA - A top US diplomat tried to play down the damage to Washington's diplomacy in Ukraine from a leaked telephone call on Friday, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel called an obscene remark about the EU "absolutely unacceptable."

UK - The Environment Agency has been accused of putting the needs of wildlife before those of humans in its management of storm-hit places like Dawlish in Devon. Days before the recent winter storms, the agency is said to have told peers that it could not act to protect the railway line at Dawlish from the sea until it had studied the impact of any improvements on local birdlife. About 85 yards of the sea wall at Dawlish was destroyed by the raging seas and high tides on Tuesday night, causing a large stretch of the railway to collapse into the sea. Network Rail estimates that it will take at least six weeks to carry out repairs and reopen the track.

UK - In last week’s Peterborough Telegraph letters pages Mr Hyland stated that 'Germany now rules the United States of Europe by means of the power of the financial strength that it can exert over all the other European countries' and later that his 'father died as a result of fighting for his country’s freedom'. Comparing the two world wars and their attendant horrors and suffering with the European Union is not only an insult to ex-serviceman but also an affront to those who believe in reasoned, rational debate.

USA - Ice continued to build this past week on the Great Lakes due to the cold air and temperatures staying below freezing, and Lake Superior's new record shows it. The lake is 92 percent frozen, toppling a 20-year-old record of 91 percent set on February 5, 1994. That statistic helped total Great Lakes ice cover soar, and we can expect to see more form in coming days. As of February 5, 2014, the entire Great Lakes system is now reportedly covered 77 percent with ice, according to the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.

USA - The latest in a series of winter storms hit the United States on Wednesday, dropping wet, heavy snow in the Northeast states that disrupted travel and threatened supplies of salt needed to keep roads clear. Over a million homes and businesses were without power in the Northeast on Wednesday following severe snow and ice storms overnight, according to local power companies. The hardest-hit state was Pennsylvania with 849,000 customers without electricity at one point, according to the governor.

UK - Credit card borrowing has grown at its fastest rate for almost five years, according to the British Bankers’ Association. More than £57 billion was owed on credit cards in December, up 4.7 per cent on a year earlier. The BBA said this was ‘further evidence of the economic recovery’. But the figures will cause concern for consumer campaigners who fear a repeat of the borrowing binge that preceded the financial crisis. More than four in ten are relying on credit cards and loans to pay bills, with personal debt standing at £139 billion, according to research from price comparison website Moneysupermarket. Those aged 18 to 24, who are unlikely to have a mortgage, owe an average of £5,446 not including student loans.

ISRAEL - US Secretary of State John Kerry revealed new details about the secretive Israeli-Palestinian Authority (PA) peace talks he is pushing through. According to Kerry, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu opposes the idea that NATO forces will secure Israel's borders in the event of a withdrawal from Judea and Samaria. That idea was raised by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas last week, who said he would agree to the IDF leaving the region after 5 years, to be replaced by NATO forces "for a long time."

EUROPE - Germany is casting doubt on the European Central Bank’s strategy to end Europe’s ‘sterilized’ intervention. Instead of acting unilaterally, it will for the first time pass the decision to the European Court of Justice. Germany’s constitutional court said the European Central Bank’s bond-buying program - Outright Monetary Transaction (OMT) - “infringes” on the powers of individual nations, a claim the ECB has flatly denied. The European Court of Justice will settle the tiff, with many analysts of the opinion the court will side with the ECB and not Germany.

USA/JAPAN - The United States’ top diplomat said this week that the US will not walk away from Japan as tensions worsen in the Far East between America’s Asian ally and China regarding a heated territory dispute in the Pacific. US Secretary of State John Kerry was meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida on Friday when he reiterated previous remarks from the White House about the Obama administration’s willingness to come to Japan’s aid if events escalate in the East China Sea. Kerry is expected to make his way to China next week. If history is any indication, however, he’s likely to be met with strong opposition from opponents who want the US out of the dispute.

IRAN - The speaker of Iran’s parliament criticized Israel and the United States during a ceremony in honor of Tunisia’s new constitution on Friday, causing the American delegation to walk out of the celebrations, Reuters reports. Addressing the ceremony at the National Assembly in Tunis, Ali Larijani referred to Israel as a "cancer" in the region. He accused the Jewish state and the United States of trying to "sterilize" the Arab Spring revolutions. Another Iranian official, Hossein Salami of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, said last week that "if the Islamic nations would unite, it could minimize the breathing room of the US and the West until the Zionist regime would no longer have room to breathe."

USA - Shooters armed with assault rifles and some knowledge of electrical utilities have prompted new worries on the vulnerability of California's vast power grid. A 2013 attack on an electric substation near San Jose that nearly knocked out Silicon Valley's power supply was initially downplayed as vandalism by Pacific Gas & Electric Co, the facility's owner. Gunfire from semiautomatic weapons did extensive damage to 17 transformers that sent grid operators scrambling to avoid a blackout. But this week, a former top power regulator offered a far more ominous interpretation: The attack was terrorism, he said, and if circumstances had been just a little different, it could have been disastrous. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission fears it was a test run for an even larger assault.

EUROPE - The Fragile Five, BRICS and MINT are acronyms for countries like Turkey, Mexico, Indonesia, and China that are at the focus of the emerging crisis. But Europe may be the most vulnerable, as banks have more than $3.4 trillion in loans in shaky markets.

ISRAEL - According to IsraelNationalNews.com (INN), a group called rabbis from the Committee to Save the Land and People of Israel penned an open letter to Secretary of State John Kerry calling for an end to his "antagonism" against Israel.