USA - America is addicted to licensing. It sounds dramatic, but it’s true. Consider this recent incident out of Chicago: shocked by the death of an infant boy in his ward, who prosecutors say was murdered by his father, Chicago Alderman Ray Lopez took to Twitter in January to express his outrage. He said he was tired of seeing tragic stories like this and had a plan to end them. “Time to start requiring childbirth licensing, conception fees or toddler escrows in order to be a parent,” the alderman tweeted. “If love doesn’t motivate good behavior, perhaps hitting their pockets will.” For many Americans, the idea is shocking — and rightly so. But given the uptick in licensing and how deeply it has become ingrained in our culture, it may not be that far-fetched.

CHINA - The Chinese government on Monday accused the US of spreading “panic” over the coronavirus outbreak by pulling its citizens out of the country and restricting travel instead of offering significant assistance. The US was the first country to begin evacuations, issued a travel warning against going to China, and from Sunday barred entry to foreigners recently in China. Washington has “unceasingly manufactured and spread panic,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said, noting that the World Health Organization had advised against trade and travel restrictions, according to Reuters. Trump said this weekend that the US had “shut down” the coronavirus threat. “We can’t have thousands of people coming in who may have this problem,” he said on Fox. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization said Monday it was working around the clock with internet and social media giants to fight widespread misinformation about the outbreak.

GERMANY - Angela Merkel and other German politicians said they regretted Brexit. But the Chancellor made clear, Germany wanted to remain the UK’s friend. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Brexit was a “deep cut for all of us”. She wanted the European Union “to continue to have a close relationship” with the United Kingdom, she stated in her podcast. Germany wanted to remain a close partner and friend of Great Britain too, “because we share common values”. Merkel said she believed “even after Britain’s exit, Europe should continue to move forward. The 27 member states of the EU will do everything they can to successfully develop Europe.” In a transition phase until the end of the year, London and Brussels would still negotiate further political relations. “Intensive negotiations are necessary”, Merkel stressed. “The European Union goes into these negotiations with good courage, but also with the representation of its own interests,” the Chancellor said. Much would also depend on Great Britain.

USA - Throughout history we have seen nations under the duress of economic constraints use war as a tool of breaking out of their bondage and the confiscation of the resources of other nations the motivating factor! China is definitely on this path just as Russia, North Korea, Iran and China! All of their economies, as they see it, are being obstructed by America's fiscal influence! There will come a time when the temptation to militarily intervene will be inescapable!

USA - All cities have their seedy sides. But this is the very centre of San Francisco, by an upmarket Westfield shopping mall thronged with people in designer clothes perusing Rolex watches, Louis Vuitton handbags and Tiffany jewellery. The beautiful city by the bay, where Tony Bennett famously left his heart and which poses as a beacon of progressiveness, has more billionaires per capita than any other on the planet. The city authorities have a huge $12 billion budget, handing their 31,800 staff average annual pay and benefit packages of an astonishing $175,000. Yet the tide of homeless, addicted and mentally ill people washing up here has become so severe that a global expert on slums claimed San Francisco may be more unsanitary than some of the poorest parts of Africa and Asia.

USA - Dr Lawrence Palevsky is a pediatrician trained at NYU School of Medicine, and did his residency at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. He recently spoke at a forum on vaccines in Connecticut, discussing the repeal of the religious exemption for childhood vaccines. Dr Palevsky spent the first nine years of his career working in emergency rooms running a neonatal intensive care unit. Once he began his private practice, he began to hear: ...not dozens, not hundreds, but thousands of stories from parents who took a very healthy child into their doctor’s office, and then found that their child lost much of their health.

Coronavirus

Australian wildfires

Iran belligerence and plane crash

Caribbean earthquakes

Volcano eruptions

Jakarta flood

President Trump's impeachment trial

Kobe dies in helicopter crash

What’s in store for the next 11 months, 2020?

CHINA - Sometimes we overlook the obvious because we don’t like the implications. Right now, China is being hit with plague after plague. The epicenter for the worst coronavirus outbreak in modern human history is in China, the worst African Swine Fever pandemic ever recorded has wiped out “about two-thirds of China’s swine herd”, and now an outbreak of H5N1 bird flu threatens to decimate Chinese chicken production. The attention of the entire planet is now keenly focused on China, and it appears that things are only going to get worse in the months ahead.

UK - Britain has ushered in a new chapter outside the European Union as Brexit was at last delivered, drawing a line under 47 years of membership. On the stroke of 11pm last night, the UK officially divorced from the bloc after three years of bitter political struggle that split families and paralysed Westminster. Jubilant Brexiteers heralded the moment with celebrations across the country, including a flagship bash in London's Parliament Square headlined by Nigel Farage. The EU and UK will use the standstill period over the next 11 months to try to hammer out the terms of their future relationship.

UK - While Britain’s exit is a historic moment, it only marks the end of the first stage of the Brexit saga. When Britons wake up on Saturday, they will notice very little change. The UK and the EU have given themselves an 11-month “transition period” — in which the UK will continue to follow the bloc’s rules — to strike new agreements on trade, security and a host of other areas. Britain’s journey to Brexit has been long, rocky — and far from over.

UK - The EU is not perfect, far from it. But to think that the UK will get a better deal with EU member states and other leading competitors is delusional. How attractive to outside investors is a country that is haemorrhaging key industries and services as a result of Brexit? It doesn't take rocket science to figure out why leading carmakers are shutting plants and moving to mainland Europe, or why key financial operators are moving to Paris and Amsterdam. Not to mention the brain drain when EU nationals who have been working in science and education pack their bags and leave. Brexit will leave Britain broken, a disunited kingdom. Geographically it has always been removed from continental Europe. That distance will become increasingly palpable politically, economically and socially. I may not be around to see it (a mixed blessing, in a way), but I predict that within the next 20 years, the UK will come begging with its tail between its legs to rejoin the EU — but the terms then will be infinitely worse than those it enjoyed for so long.

UK - Brexit has been a long time coming in the eyes of many in Britain. But while resentment for the EU reached breaking point in the 2016 referendum, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's frustration with Brussels started long ago. Mrs Thatcher shockingly compared the bloc to the Soviet Union in 1988, during a speech at the College of Europe in 1988, when the EU was still known as the European Economic Community. Furious that her economic reforms could be upended by the European model, the Prime Minister took aim at Brussels with a scathing comparison to the Soviet Union. She said: “It is ironic that just when those countries such as the Soviet Union, which have tried to run everything from the centre, are learning that success depends on dispersing power and decisions away from the centre, there are some in the Community who seem to want to move in the opposite direction. We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.”

EUROPE - The ominous warning came from high profile Eurosceptic in France, Marine Le Pen. Having spent much of her career taking aim at Brussels, she was one politician in Europe who was especially delighted when Britain voted to leave the bloc in June 2016. Just days after the historic result, in which the Leave campaign secured victory with 52 percent of the vote, Ms Le Pen dealt further blows to the EU's pride. Four days after the vote, she told Time Magazine: "This is the beginning of the end of the European Union. And I hope the birth of the Europe of nations, a Europe of cooperation, that we’ve been propounding for years. The European Union is objectively a total failure. It’s a social failure, it’s an economic failure, it’s a failure in terms of power, it’s a diplomatic failure."

AUSTRALIA - A wildfire burning near Australia's national capital Canberra has grown to more than 35,000 hectares as some residents were warned it's too late to leave the area. As officials closed a major motorway due to the bushfire, residents in some areas around the capital were warned that it was "too late to leave" and were advised to seek shelter. The capital region declared a state of emergency on Friday because of a fire that by Saturday covered 88,500 acres (35,800 hectares) of forest and farmland south of Canberra, Australian Capital Territory Emergency Services Agency Commissioner Georgeina Whelan said.

JAPAN - It is looking increasingly likely that Japan will be dumping contaminated Fukushima water into the ocean. A panel of experts that have been advising on the best disposal method for radioactive water from the destroyed nuclear plant made the recommendation today - one the Japanese government is likely to accept. The panel, under the industry ministry, came to the conclusion which is likely to alarm neighbouring countries, after narrowing it down to two choices: releasing contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean or letting it evaporate. Tokyo Electric, or Tepco, has collected nearly 1.2 million tonnes of contaminated water from the cooling pipes used to keep fuel cores from melting since the plant was crippled by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011. The water is stored in huge tanks that crowd the site. The utility says it will run out of room to store the water by 2022.