VATICAN - Pope Francis said Wednesday that the ongoing atrocities in Ukraine demonstrate the “impotence” of the United Nations to curb violence and protect the innocent. “Today we often hear about ‘geopolitics,’” the pontiff told the crowd gathered for his weekly general audience in the Vatican. “But unfortunately, the dominant logic are the strategies of the most powerful countries to affirm their own interests, extending their area of economic influence, or ideological influence, and/or military influence.” “We are seeing this with the war,” Francis continued, while decrying “the colonization of the most powerful” over their weaker neighbors.

ISRAEL - World Economic Forum member and professor of history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Yuval Noah Harari, has posited that within a decade or two, algorithms could be used to determine if teenagers are unknowingly homosexual. During a 2018 presentation at the annual World Economic Forum meet, titled, Will the Future Be Human? Harari said the coming merger of info-tech and bio-tech will provide the ability to “hack human beings.” According to Harari, once the merger provides enough biometric information coupled with the necessary computing power, algorithms can be created that know the person better than they know themselves. “We don’t really know ourselves,” Harari said. “To give an example, when I was 21, I finally realized that I was gay after living several years in denial. And this is not exceptional. A lot of gay men live in denial for many years. They don’t know something very important about themselves. Now, imagine a situation, in 10 or 20 years, when an algorithm can tell any teenager exactly where he or she is on the gay-straight spectrum.”

WALES, UK - Schools across Wales and the rest of the UK are warning parents to watch out for an inappropriate video circulating on YouTube and TikTok which has left children deeply traumatised. The 'Huggy Wuggy' video, which features a killer teddy bear, has reportedly slipped through parental filters and has since been re-enacted by pupils in the playground. Headteachers in some parts of the country have sent emails to parents urging them to be extra vigilant and check that their child is not accessing this video or any other inappropriate content. The animated character goes by the friendly name of Huggy Wuggy which leads parents and children to believe the videos are aimed at youngsters and contain no inappropriate material. But the blue bear-like creature, who has has long arms and rows of razor sharp teeth, chases and threatens other characters in nightmarish scenarios.

USA - Texas is in the worst drought conditions since 2011, when 95% of the state was in drought. Eleven years ago, parched conditions caused over $7 billion in crop and livestock losses, sparked wildfires, pushed power grids to the limit and reduced reservoirs to dangerously low levels, according to the University of Texas at Austin. As of March 29, 88% of Texas was in drought conditions, affecting an estimated 18.2 million Texans, according to the US Drought Monitor. About 42% of the state is seeing extreme or exceptional drought. Monday’s storms improved conditions in North Texas, experts say, and East Texas is expected to get more rain in the coming weeks. Conditions in West Texas, however, are expected to worsen with little rainfall.

UK - Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he does not believe transgender women should compete in female sporting events, a view he said was "sensible" but possibly "controversial". Transgender athletes competing in sport has been in the headlines of late after transgender cyclist Emily Bridges was ruled ineligible to compete in her first elite women's race by cycling's world governing body. Issues cited around the issue in general have been inclusion, sporting fairness and safety. Johnson was speaking on a range of issues, including the UK Government's approach to the ban on so-called conversion therapy, before telling Sky News: "I don't think biological males should be competing in female sporting events. I also happen to think that women should have spaces - whether it's in hospitals, prison or changing rooms - which are dedicated to women. That's as far as my thinking has developed on this issue. If that puts me in conflict with some others, then we have got to work it all out.”

UK - A Bishop in the UK has described the process of becoming transgender as a ‘sacred journey’ in a letter urging the nation’s government to ban trans ‘conversion therapy’. One UK Bishop has demanded that the UK government implement a ban on trans “conversion therapy”, describing the process in which people become transgender as a “sacred journey”.

USA - The Federal Reserve's fight against inflation will spark a recession in the United States that begins late next year, Deutsche Bank warned on Tuesday. The recession call - the first from a major bank - reflects growing concern that the Fed will hit the brakes on the economy so hard that it will inadvertently end the recovery that began just two years ago. "We no longer see the Fed achieving a soft landing. Instead, we anticipate that a more aggressive tightening of monetary policy will push the economy into a recession," Deutsche Bank economists led by Matthew Luzzetti wrote in the report. That forecast is driven by red-hot inflation, with consumer prices rising at the fastest pace in 40 years. Hopes that inflation would rapidly cool off have been dashed, in part because of the war in Ukraine. Inflationary pressures have broadened out, raising concern that the Fed will have to rapidly raise interest rates to get prices under control. Deutsche Bank pointed to how energy and food commodity prices have spiked since Russia invaded Ukraine.

JAPAN - Japanese Minister of Defense Nobuo Kishi declared on Monday that his ministry might request a larger budget for the next fiscal year to bolster Tokyo’s ability to stand up to a possible military threat coming from any regional power. The Asian nation’s new desire to level up its military might comes despite Japan’s allegiance to an exclusively defense-oriented policy under the country’s constitution. “The defense budget is a major indicator that shows the nation’s will. We want to ensure a budget that is enough to strengthen our defense capabilities drastically,” said Kishi in an interview with the Kyodo news outlet. The defense minister has argued that Japan needs to prop up its army due to an increasingly severe regional security environment. In particular, he has cautioned against China's intensifying military assertiveness and North Korea's nuclear threat. Japan’s fears over North Korea are growing as Pyongyang is testing new intercontinental ballistic missiles. Tokyo is also increasingly concerned with Beijing’s claims of sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands, an uninhabited Japanese archipelago in the East China Sea.

USA - The drumbeats of war are picking up the pace of inflation. Inflation, as I’ve argued here for some time, was certain to rise for months to come; but you’ll see in the various inflation notes below that sanctions made in response to the war are increasing inflation even more, as could be expected, and shortages due to the war are driving up costs as well. Some is from the war, itself; some is from our responses to it. What follows is a broad picture of the most notable areas where either background inflation (rising producer costs) or consumer inflation is rising significantly: (Producer costs, of course, eventually get passed on to consumers, so they are the CPI jolts of tomorrow.)

AFRICA - When it comes to water security – a reliable, good supply of safe water – just 29 African countries have made some progress over the past three to five years. Twenty-five have made none. This data comes out of the UN’s first-ever assessment of water security in Africa. Published by the UN University’s Canada-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health, the assessment used 10 indicators to quantify water security in Africa’s 54 countries. Such an assessment had been done before in the Asia-Pacific region, but never for Africa. These countries are home to half a billion people. The situation doesn’t appear to be improving very quickly.

USA - Which looming global conflict shall I talk about today? It appears that there won’t be a ceasefire in Ukraine for the foreseeable future, I believe that China is seriously considering a full-blown invasion of Taiwan, and an extremely violent conflict between Israel and Iran could literally erupt at any moment. But today I think that I will focus on a hotspot that is not getting nearly as much attention as it deserves. Tensions are rising between North Korea and South Korea once again, and if a shooting war erupts on the Korean peninsula it could easily result in tens of millions of deaths. North Korea possesses nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and I am entirely convinced that Kim Jong-Un is crazy enough to use them. North Korea has a military that is far superior to South Korea’s military. All these years, it has been the United States that has prevented North Korea from “reuniting” the Korean peninsula by force. But now the Biden administration is distracted by the war in Ukraine. And if China were to invade Taiwan as well, the US simply would not be able to devote sufficient resources to prevent the North Koreans from overwhelming the South Koreans.

GERMANY - Contrary to the popular historical narrative, the country has always prepared for war. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz does not have a reputation as a man of big words. Yet, speaking to the German parliament on February 27 — just days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — he broke this mold to give a speech ushering in what analysts have correctly described as an “epochal shift,” or even a “revolution,” in German foreign policy.

USA - The top US military officer told lawmakers Tuesday that the world is becoming more unstable and the "potential for significant international conflict is increasing, not decreasing." Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin appeared before the House Armed Services Committee in their first testimony before Congress since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

NATO - Much has been said and written about media bias and double standards in the West's response to the Russia-Ukraine war, when compared with other wars and military conflicts across the world, especially in the Middle East and the Global South. Less obvious is how such hypocrisy is a reflection of a much larger phenomenon which governs the West's relationship to war and conflict zones.

USA - Elon Musk's 9.2% stake in Twitter and his newly announced board seat has sent the left into an anti-free-speech tailspin. On Monday, CNN host Brian Stelter said there's a 'fear' over Musk's move. "There's interest in billionaires, there's celebration of the Musk. There's also fear, I think, sometimes or wariness of- okay, so here's the richest man on the planet who just bought a big chunk of one of our most important communications tools," said Stelter. ""He's also one of the biggest owners of satellites in the world. So he's incredibly powerful, incredibly, I don't know, am I allowed to use the word strange when talking about Elon Musk?" Except, billionaires have been controlling information for decades and nobody had a problem. And it's no wonder why the left is rattled - according to Statista, their biggest problem with Twitter is 'inaccurate or misleading information,' while they're least concerned about 'Twitter banning users.' Musk has been an outspoken proponent of free speech - which he says that failing to adhere to "fundamentally undermines democracy."