EUROPE - France and Germany will send parts of a joint military brigade to Mali in its first deployment to Africa, a statement said Wednesday. "France and Germany have decided to send elements of the Franco-German Brigade to Mali: the first deployment under the aegis of the EU and in an African location," a joint statement said after a security and defence meeting in Paris between the two countries. It said the troops sent would integrate into a European mission in Mali to train soldiers. The mission was launched in February last year and has already trained nearly 3,000 Malian forces.

CHINA - China has long trained for an amphibious invasion of Taiwan during military exercises but has expanded its training to include a similar attack on Japanese holdings in the East China Sea, according to the chief of intelligence of the US Pacific Fleet (PACFLEET). As part of China’s Mission Action 2013 exercise — a massive exercise between all the branches of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) — the military trained for taking the Senkaku Islands, said Captain James Fannell, deputy chief of staff intelligence and information operations for PACFLEET. In the last year, China has increased military activity and additionally increased provocative military actions in the South China Sea around the so-called Nine Dash Line — China’s expansive claim into the region in conflict with several other international claims.

USA - Surprised by how tough this winter has been? You’re in good company: Last fall the Climate Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted that temperatures would be above normal from November through January across much of the Lower 48 states. “Not one of our better forecasts,” admits Mike Halpert, the Climate Prediction Center’s acting director.

EUROPE - Viviane Reding calls for full fiscal and political union for 18 eurozone countries but says UK should remain apart. A celebrated call by Winston Churchill for the creation of a "United States of Europe" was revived on Monday by a leading member of the European commission who said the 18 eurozone countries should form a full fiscal and political union.

GERMANY - Eclipsed by the power struggle over the Ukraine, Berlin is pushing to speed up the signing of two other EU Association Agreements. The agreements to permanently associate Georgia and Moldova to the EU should be signed in due form no later than August and should be implemented as soon as possible.

UNITED NATIONS - As faithful Catholics continue to contend with last week’s incendiary United Nations report attacking the Church for her teachings on contraception, abortion, and homosexuality, it may be time to look closely at the real agenda at the United Nations.

UKRAINE - Protests have gripped Ukraine since the government rejected a far-reaching accord with the EU in favour of stronger ties with Russia in November 2013. They turned violent on 19 January, and deadly on 22 January in the capital, Kiev, where confrontation degenerated into rioting after the government brought in tough new legislation to end mass protests on the main square.

TEMPLE MOUNT, ISRAEL - MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud-Beytenu) ascended to the Temple Mount Wednesday after 10 months in which security forces refused to let him set foot there. Feiglin reported afterward that he had toured “all corners” of the Temple Mount, including the Ramah – where the Temple building and inner courtyard were located, according to Jewish sages. Feiglin said that he had also prayed on the Mount.

GERMANY - Germany may resume active counter-espionage operations against US and other Western agents after decades of only minimal monitoring, the news magazine Der Spiegel reported Sunday. The resumption, including actively tracking US agents operating under diplomatic cover on German soil, follows revelations since June of US electronic surveillance in Germany and Washington's reluctance to agree to a blanket no-mutual-spying pact sought by Berlin. Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the German domestic intelligence service, the BfV, publicly foreshadowed the move in November, saying Germany needed to "adjust counter-espionage and take a 360-degree view."

SYRIA - A landmark agreement to disarm Syria of its chemical arsenal has fallen months behind schedule with only 11 per cent of the deadliest poisons shipped out so far. Under this deal, all 700 tons of “priority 1” chemicals - the most lethal components of President Bashar al-Assad’s stockpile - should have left Syria by December 31. In fact, only three shipments have departed carrying 77 tons, or 11 per cent, of this holding. A British official said that all plans were in place to destroy Syria’s chemical arsenal and Mr Assad was deliberately dragging his feet. ”Everything is ready for the destruction of Syria’s chemicals, but Syria is not delivering them up at the port of Latakia as it should,” he said.

JAPAN - Snow-choked roads cut off thousands on Tuesday as parts of Japan struggled to dig out from its second storm in a week, with the death toll rising to at least 23. Train services were suspended in some areas after the Valentine's Day storm dumped more than a meter of snow in parts of central Japan and blanketed the capital with record snow for the second weekend in a row, snarling airline traffic and slowing production at some Japanese automakers. The freak storm dumped more than 1.1 meters of snow in Yamanashi prefecture in central Japan, the most in more than a century of record-keeping and lesser amounts across a wide swathe of the eastern and north-eastern parts of the nation. Tokyo was hit by 27 cm (10.6 inches). By Tuesday, at least 23 people had died, including some killed in traffic accidents or by being caught under snow that fell from roofs.

ISRAEL - Speaking Sunday night, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Danon sarcastically said that the Jewish people “are grateful” to Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas for “recognizing the Jewish right to pray at the Kotel [Wailing Wall].” Abbas made the comments earlier Sunday, speaking to Israeli students in Ramallah. “We do not need the permission of anyone to pray at the Kotel, certainly not from the Palestinian leadership,” Danon said. “Jews have prayed, Jews pray, and Jews will pray at the Kotel forever.” Besides presenting his views on the Kotel, Abbas also discussed numerous other issues. Abbas said he would never recognize Israel as a Jewish state. “You want to go the UN to change the name of the state, then do so. I only know and recognize Israel, I do not know a 'democratic, Jewish state.'”

UK - British schoolchildren are lagging so far behind their peers in the Far East that even pupils from wealthy backgrounds are now performing worse in exams than the poorest students in China, an international study shows. The children of factory workers and cleaners in parts of the Far East are more than a year ahead of the offspring of British doctors and lawyers, according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The report was published as a senior European Commission politician attacked the standards of British schools and warned that UK politicians must improve the education system before focusing on changing the country’s relationship with the EU.

NORTH KOREA - China rejected what it said was "unreasonable criticism" of Beijing in a new UN report on human rights abuses in North Korea, but it would not be drawn on whether it would veto any proceedings in the Security Council to bring Pyongyang to book. North Korean security chiefs and possibly even Kim Jong Un, the leader of the country, should face international justice for ordering systematic torture, starvation and killings comparable to Nazi-era atrocities, UN investigators said. The unprecedented public rebuke and warning to a head of state by a UN inquiry is likely to further antagonise Kim and complicate efforts to persuade him to rein in his isolated country's nuclear weapons programme and belligerent confrontations with South Korea and the West.

USA - A recent ruling on same-sex marriage ignores the fundamentals of human sexuality. Denial of reality on the marriage issue is becoming almost impermeable. Self-reinforcing decisions from one federal court to another are weaving together a skein of an alternate reality in which we will all soon be required to participate. It just hit Virginia, where I reside. On February 13, US District Judge Arenda L Wright Allen chose to disenfranchise the citizens of the Commonwealth by voiding that part of our constitution and those laws that define marriage as between one man and one woman as unconstitutional.