USA - On Friday, America’s debt limit extension expires and Congress is expected to renew its legal $16.7 trillion debt cap. If the debt limit isn’t raised, the US could burn through its cash as soon as February 28, Secretary Treasurer Jacob Lew warns. “Time is short. Congress needs to act to extend the nation’s borrowing authority, and it needs to act now,” Lew told an audience at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington DC think tank. On Friday, February 7, Congress will vote to increase the statutory debt limit, which will enable the government to pay for spending bills it has already passed. "Without borrowing authority, at some point very soon, it would not be possible to meet all of the obligations of the federal government," Lew said.

UK - So much for all that talk of ‘winding down’, let alone a regency. To read some recent reports, one might imagine that the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh had all but retired to the dower house in reduced circumstances and handed over to the younger generation. But that narrative will, surely, be quietly shelved. We now learn that the 87-year-old Queen and 92-year-old Duke are preparing to embark on a fresh year of milestones and major events — not least an historic trip to meet the new Pope in his Vatican B&B and a state visit to France. Next autumn, she will overtake Queen Victoria and become the longest-reigning sovereign in our history. No wonder world leaders are queuing up for a chat.

USA - The economic picture is looking brighter these days. The federal government announced Thursday that economic growth had picked up to its fastest pace in two years, while employment growth over the past five months has averaged a healthy 185,000 new jobs. But as evidenced by a report out Thursday from the Corporation for Enterprise Development, nearly half of Americans are living in a state of “persistent economic insecurity,” that makes it “difficult to look beyond immediate needs and plan for a more secure future.” In other words, too many of us are living paycheck to paycheck.

USA - How dangerous is the world? Listen to what leaders in the intelligence community are saying and it’s frightening. Besides the usual international hotspots — terrorism from the Middle East, Chinese militarization and Iran’s nuclear weapons program — many topical threats including organized crime, food and energy crises, and global pandemics are areas that are a growing concern to intelligence officials.

USA - When Chicago Tribune reporter Will Potter went to pass out animal rights leaflets, he had no idea the FBI would single him out and pressure him to become an anti-activism informant, threatening his future if he refused. Here, we talk to the TED Fellow and author of Green is the New Red about this experience, which sent him into a whole new area of research. The crux of what he found: environmental and animal-rights activists are now considered the United States’ number-one domestic terrorism threat, and they are being prosecuted as criminals.

USA - Did you hear about the recent federal appeals court ruling that shot down the terribly-named "net neutrality?" Most people probably didn't notice the news and aren't quite sure what net neutrality actually means anyway. Before the court ruling, Internet service providers had to treat all content going through their pipes equally, just like conversations are treated going through a phone line. That is "net neutrality." After the ruling, if you're a big company with some bucks, you can pay Verizon, Comcast or a similar ISP to speed your data along faster. For the right price, your data can jump ahead in line. ISPs will also be allowed to block content they find objectionable, though they swear they would never ever do that, of course.

GERMANY - The rise of Eurosceptic groups such as the UK Independence Party hampers the cooperation that has kept the continent at peace for decades, Germany’s foreign minister said.

ISRAEL - In a heated attack on John Kerry’s speech at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Steinitz accused the US Secretary of State of holding a gun to Israel’s head in the peace negotiations. Kerry triggered a wave of criticism in Israel when he said there is “talk of boycotts” if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not come to an end.

EUROPE - EU Ambassador to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen threatened Israel Monday over the outcome of peace talks."There is a risk that you will face increasing isolation," Faaborg-Andersen said, in a statement to Channel 2. "Not necessarily as a result of European Union policy, but Israel has to realize that economic relations are established by private economic actors - be it consumers, be it companies - and we, as a government, have no influence on the private decisions that private citizens and companies are making." Faaborg-Andersen's comments came just days after US Secretary of State John Kerry warned Israel of similar consequences if peace talks fail, in remarks widely perceived as a threat against Israel.

GERMANY - German President Joachim Gauck has said his country should put aside World War II anxieties and play a bigger military role abroad. “While there are genuine pacifists in Germany, there are also people who use Germany’s guilt for its past as a shield for laziness,” he said on Friday (31 January) at the Munich Security Conference, a yearly meeting of European and US security chiefs. “This [guilt] gives Germany a questionable right to look the other way … Restraint can be taken too far.” Gauck indicated that Germany’s role in leading the EU on the financial crisis could be repeated in leading the way on EU military co-operation. “We’re not calling the alliance with the US into question. But we’ve observed symptoms of stress and uncertainty about the future,” he said of Nato.

CHINA - Speaking for the first time since her departure from Fitch last year, Chu, who has taken a new job at Autonomous, the respected independent research firm, says she remains adamant that a Chinese banking collapse of some description remains not just an outside chance, but a certainty. “The banking sector has extended $14 trillion to $15 trillion in the span of five years. There’s no way that we are not going to have massive problems in China,” she says. As the problems in the Chinese financial system become harder to ignore, it is likely Chu’s opinions are going to be increasingly sought as investors look for insight on what is going on in the world’s second-largest economy.

USA - Emerging markets faced intense pressure on Thursday after the US Federal Reserve cut its stimulus further, with currencies in India, South Africa and Turkey failing to rally despite interest rate rises. Asian shares fell heavily and European stocks also retreated, extending a global rout driven by worries about emerging markets. Concerns were stoked when the US central bank further reduced its quantitative easing (QE) stimulus overnight.

USA - Despite great strides in prevention and treatment, cancer rates remain stubbornly high and may soon surpass heart disease as the leading cause of death in the United States. Increasingly, we and many other experts believe that an important culprit may be our own medical practices: We are silently irradiating ourselves to death. The use of medical imaging with high-dose radiation — CT scans in particular — has soared in the last 20 years. Our resulting exposure to medical radiation has increased more than sixfold between the 1980s and 2006, according to the National Council on Radiation Protection & Measurements. The radiation doses of CT scans are 100 to 1,000 times higher than conventional X-rays.

CHINA - China has forced another foreign correspondent to leave the country, the latest in a series of expulsions that have heightened tensions between western media companies and the Communist Party. The reporter, Austin Ramzy of The New York Times, left Beijing on Thursday for Taipei. Chinese officials had declined to issue new work documents to Ramzy, a longtime resident of China who has in the past renewed his credentials without incident. Ramzy will join a growing group of reporters that have been denied access to the mainland.

ARGENTINA - Argentina's president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and her ministers blame foreign 'vultures' for an economic meltdown as power cuts hit Buenos Aires and goods vanish from supermarket shelves. The sudden dollar scarcity on Argentina's exchange market sent the peso's official value crashing to eight pesos to the dollar, while the "blue" illegal rate shot up to nearly 13 pesos. Retailers immediately marked up their prices to reflect the new reality. In some cases, items were pulled en masse from the shelves, as retailers pondered how much to mark up their goods.