USA - Over a quarter of Americans do not know the Earth circles the Sun, according to a new survey. One in four Americans is completely unfamiliar with Nicolaus Copernicus's 1543 theory that the Earth circles the Sun, according to a study by the National Science Foundation. The survey, released on Friday at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, asked 2,200 people nine factual questions about physical and biological science, with the average score being just 5.8 correct answers. A total of 42 per cent of Americans said that astrology is either "very scientific" or "sort of scientific".

MIDDLE EAST - Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s suggestion that NATO forces be deployed in the future Palestinian state is not well-received by his rivals, the Hamas rulers of Gaza. A spokesman for Hamas said Friday that the faction would regard any international military presence within a future Palestinian state as "occupation" forces, reported the Ma’an news agency. During a rally in southern Gaza, spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that any international forces stationed in “Palestine” as a result of a peace agreement with Israel would be treated the same as “the Israeli occupation.”

EUROPE - The EU’s ruling elites in Brussels are going all out for the May European Parliament elections, attempting to expand their powers throughout the continent and beat back a growing rebellion against centralization. Viviane Reding, the controversial and voluble European justice commissioner, was in London on February 10 for a public debate on “The Future of Europe,” part of a “Citizens’ Dialogue” series launched by the commission in 2013 as a key element of a year-long propaganda blitz. That blitz is aimed at influencing the vote for the 751 members of the European Parliament in elections that will take place in every member state from May 22-25.

UK - An acutely embarrassing Bible reading, scheduled for the day the Church of England Synod voted to fast-track women bishops, should remind people not to take the 'Good Book' literally, argues chaplain Jemima Thackray.

USA - A "catastrophic" ice storm wreaking havoc in the American South is now poised to pummel the eastern seaboard, say forecasters. More than 350,000 people are reportedly without power and 3,300 US flights have been cancelled due to ice and strong winds. Nearly empty roadways were reported as many heeded warnings to stay indoors. North Carolina and Virginia are bracing for up to 1ft (30cm) of snow as the storm rolls north. The National Weather Service said it was an event of "historical proportions", drawing comparisons with similar weather systems that struck the Atlanta area in 2000 and 1973.

UK - Another 1,000 homes are likely to flood as fresh storms hit Britain this weekend, the Environment Agency admitted on Thursday. With a month’s worth of rain falling on Friday and Saturday, towns on the Thames, Severn and in the South West will be exposed to the flooding that has already forced 6,000 families to evacuate their homes. The battle to contain the damage from the floods now involves 70 per cent of the country’s Fire and Rescue Services – their biggest deployment since the Second World War. David Cameron declared that “we cannot let this situation happen again” as he announced a review of funding rules governing flood defences for rural communities.

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?