EUROPE - Storm activity across Europe is on the up this week, as three storms are forecast to hit the Iberian Peninsula. Storm Bernardo is already impacting the Iberian Peninsula, triggering orange weather warnings for wind and rain. Forecasters are predicting Bernardo to be a high impact storm and will churn seas and thrash the western Mediterranean coast. Bernardo will also increase the risk of avalanches in Picos de Europa National Park in Northern Spain. The Asturias regional weather service warned of avalanches: “Within a short period a lot of new snow will fall on the snow already present. The amount of snow that is now in the mountains has become considerable. This considerably increases the risk of ‘spontaneous avalanches’.”

ITALY - Venice was swamped by flood waters on Tuesday, as it experienced the second highest tide in its history. Iconic city submerged by worst floods in 50 years as disaster declared. City officials said the tide peaked at 6.14ft at 10.50 pm, just short of the record 6.4ft set in 1966. The city’s mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, declared a state of disaster and warned of severe damage. He tweeted that “it will be a long night”, and compared the flood to “a wound that will leave a permanent mark.” Italy has been gripped by a powerful weather front that has brought torrential rain to all parts of the country, especially in the south.

BANGLADESH AND INDIA - At least 10 people have been killed and millions displaced after Cyclone Bulbul smashed into India and Bangladesh over the weekend. The storm hit Bangladesh late on Saturday night, and led to severe flooding there and in neighboring India. The bad weather has since dissipated, but many are still waiting to return to their homes. Enamur Rahman, Bangladesh's minister for disaster management, said a total of 2.16 million people have been evacuated from their homes across the country. Most of the 10 victims confirmed dead as a result of the storm were killed by falling debris. India's meteorological authorities classified Bulbul as a severe cyclonic storm, with a maximum sustained wind speed of 120 kilometers per hour (75 mph). Bulbul is not the first powerful storm to hit the region this year. In May, seven people died following Cyclone Fani, the strongest tropical cyclone to make landfall in India in 20 years.

USA - Thousands of flights were canceled or delayed, some areas struggled under more than a foot of snow and more than 200 million people faced a freezing forecast Tuesday as a historic Arctic air mass swept across much of the nation. Bitter cold temperatures were reported from the Canadian border to South Texas. The freeze was moving east, headed for a swath from New England to Florida. Chicagoans awoke to single digits, a few inches of snow and a forecast high of 20 degrees that would smash the city's record for the date by 8 degrees. That's after an American Eagle flight slid off a runway Monday while landing at O'Hare International Airport. No injuries were reported. The National Weather Service in Chicago warned that the combination of air temperatures and blustery northwest winds had sent wind chills below zero.

POLAND - Tens of thousands of far-righters march in ‘independence’ parade calling for ‘Polish Intifada’. The march also drew anti-abortion and anti-LGBT activists, with some demonstrators chanting in support of the “regular family,” the Notes From Poland website reported. Anti-immigration was another major theme of the event, with Ziemowit Przebitkowski of the ultra-nationalist All-Polish Youth group telling Poles that it was important to foster “national morals” and stop mass immigration. The so-called independence march has grown to attract the attention and participation of far-right groups and figures from around the world. This year, activists from the far-right Italian Forza Nuova group and hardline activists from Hungary also took part. Poland is increasingly polarized since the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party took power four years ago promising a revival of patriotism and traditional Catholic values.

USA - US Air Force Veteran Rob Henderson penned a column for the Wall Street Journal this week in which he made the case that veterans feel betrayed by colleges and universities that seek to undermine American values. Henderson expressed concern that campus activists actively seek to destroy the American values that veterans have risked their lives to defend. Henderson noted that college students often boast about their opposition to basic American values, like the First and Second Amendments.

CANADA - Polar bears have become the poster child for climate change, their population supposedly devastated by shrinking ice cover. But when one zoologist disproved the myth, she came under the inquisition of the climate church. Zoologist and polar bear expert Susan Crockford was shunned by the academy for her insistence that despite the polar bear’s status as a climate change icon, the warming planet had actually caused the species to thrive. She did not deny climate change – merely the idea that it was harming the bears. After losing her contract as an adjunct professor at Canada’s University of Victoria, where she worked for 15 years, she has been vindicated by a report from northern Canada confirming her theory that polar bears are climate change’s beneficiaries, rather than its victims.

USA - Experts are warning us that this will be a “freezing, frigid, and frosty” winter, and even though the official beginning of winter is still over a month away, it already feels like that in much of the country right now. Over the next several days, it will literally feel like it is mid-January in much of the central and eastern portions of the United States. Many areas will be hit by temperatures that are 30 degrees below normal, and heavy snow is expected in some areas of the Midwest. Unfortunately, this bitterly cold weather is coming at a very bad time for corn farmers. According to the latest USDA crop progress report, only 52 percent of the corn in the middle of the country has been harvested. So about half of the corn is still sitting out there, and these extraordinarily low temperatures could potentially be absolutely devastating. In essence, this cold front threatens to put an exclamation point on an absolutely horrific year for U.S. farmers.

ICELAND - Hundreds of earthquakes have rocked an Icelandic volcano which was responsible for an eruption with international consequences. Some believe this could be sign of an impending eruption. Many global travellers will still have memories of the last time an Icelandic volcano massively erupted. The 2010 Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption left 10 million air passengers stranded after grounding flights all around the world and cost the European economy around £4 billion. Flights were grounded for days, leaving millions of people stranded. Such was the strength of the ash cloud that it caused the most air travel disruption since World War Two.

EUROPE - So far 23 EU nations have agreed to join forces as part of a defence cooperation pact, driven by and whose leaders have long-campaigned for greater integration amongst member states. The agreement will add yet another convoluted deal to the bloc, with some nations taking part while others do not. The Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) pact includes commitments to integrate armed forces, a boost in defence spending and the establishment of a joint HQ - and have set aside £4.9 billion (€5.5 billion) to fund research and development into new military hardware and the joint purchase of new equipment.

EUROPE - Leading officials in Brussels are on edge after recent economic forecasts pointed to an imminent collapse of the EU economy. The official forecast predicted that the EU’s economy “looks to be heading towards a protracted period of more subdued growth and muted inflation”. Hordern explained: “The worst is still ahead for the EU. That is the warning from the European Commission after they cut the Euro area growth and inflation outlook for 2020. They blame trade wars and political uncertainties for the dramatic weakness in the region.” She continued: “According to officials, risks remain decidedly to the downside.”

USA - What do you do when you have lost all hope that things will ever turn around? It may still feel like “the economy is booming” for those at the top end of the economic food chain in big coastal cities such as New York and San Francisco, but for millions of hard working Americans in the middle of the country, talk of a “coming recession” is absolutely ludicrous because it already feels like a severe economic depression is happening right now. In America’s heartland, bankruptcies are surging, debt burdens are becoming overwhelming, and suicide rates are spiking to unprecedented levels. We have not seen economic despair this extreme since the last recession... As the cost of living continues to rise much faster than wages do, hard working Americans are increasingly turning to debt in order to make ends meet, and during the next recession many families will not be able to service those debts.

ISRAEL - It’s all about keeping Shabbat. For a 25-hour period beginning at sundown November 15, as many as 1 million Jews from Nashville to Nairobi — and more than 1,500 other cities around the world — will turn off their cellphones and set aside a day of rest, some of them for the first time in their lives, as part of The Shabbat Project. The goal is simple: getting as many Jews as possible to observe one Shabbat together with the hope that their shared experience will lead to a spiritual awakening and a more meaningful, rewarding Jewish life.

AUSTRALIA - Thousands of people are in the path of deadly Australian bushfires that have produced clouds of smoke seen as far away as New Zealand. A seven-day state of emergency has been declared in New South Wales, where strong winds, high temperatures and low humidity have prompted the Rural Fire Service to issue a "catastrophic" fire warning for the greater Sydney region. It's the worst threat level ever issued for Sydney under the current system, which was introduced in 2009. The city is home to around 4.6 million people, but the greatest fire risk lies in rural areas outside the city center. They include the greater Hunter area, Illawarra, and Shoalhaven, which are also facing "catastrophic" fire threats. Satellite images showed smoke billowing more than 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand's South Island.

ITALY - Tourists that visit the Colosseum in Rome these days are getting quite a shock. A gigantic statue of a pagan Canaanite deity known as “Molech” has been erected right at the entrance. In ancient times, those that served Molech would literally sacrifice their children to him, and apparently this involved burning them to death. And now a massive statue of this pagan idol is the centerpiece of a new “archaeological exhibition” at the world famous Roman Colosseum. Yes, the exact same Colosseum where countless numbers of Christians were martyred for their faith is now the home for one of the most monstrous pagan deities that the world has ever seen.