ITALY - Italian children have been told not to turn up to school unless they can prove they have been properly vaccinated. The deadline follows months of national debate over compulsory vaccination. Parents risk being fined up to €500 (£425; $560) if they send their unvaccinated children to school. Children under six can be turned away. The new law came amid a surge in measles cases - but Italian officials say vaccination rates have improved since it was introduced. Children up to the age of six years will be excluded from nursery and kindergarten without proof of vaccination under the new rules. Those aged between six and 16 cannot be banned from attending school, but their parents face fines if they do not complete the mandatory course of immunisations.

ITALY - Should parents have the right to exercise conscientious objection in order to prevent their children from being inoculated with vaccines produced from aborted fetal cell lines? And what does science tell us about these vaccines? Scientists, ecclesiastics, activists and parents will gather at a Rome conference on March 13 to explore the history, science and politics surrounding the use of aborted fetuses in vaccines given to children around the world. The association organizing the event is called Renovatio 21. The conference will take place at 3:30pm at the Casa Bonus Pastor in Rome and will be themed: “Faith, Science and Conscience: using aborted fetuses for pharmaceutical production.”

ISRAEL - Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said Israel “will not allow a religious war to be caused on Temple Mount” and warned any attempt to “damage Israeli sovereignty on Temple mount”  will be met with the “fierce resistance” of Police, Ynet reported on Tuesday. Jerusalem Police closed all entrances to the Temple Mount on Tuesday after Palestinians reportedly threw a Molotov cocktail at a police outpost on the compound. Dozens of policemen entered the compound after the incident. In a Monday interview with Radio 103FM Erdan said that Israel will not allow “another mosque be built on Temple Mount.”

USA - The passenger of arguably the world’s most-famous aircraft, US Air Force One, Donald Trump is highly concerned that the complexity of modern planes is creating danger as pilots can no longer take control of the plane when needed. The increasing automation of the aircraft industry drew some barbs from US President Donald Trump on Tuesday. On his Twitter account the 72-year-old leader said “airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly” and require “scientists from MIT” rather than pilots. The remarks are apparently Trump’s response to the fatal crash of a Boeing 737 MAX 8 in Ethiopia – a second for this new airliner model in less than six months – which killed 157 people. The US aircraft producer is currently trying to cope with worldwide fallout from the disaster, as countries ground local fleets or ban it from their airspace.

UK - With the clock ticking inexorably closer to the date for the UK's official departure from the EU, the week ahead promises to be a nail-biter. There are just under three weeks left before the United Kingdom is due to officially leave the European Union on March 29. Depending on your point of view, none of the permutations are particularly palatable. So what can we expect in Parliament this week?

UK - Theresa May is back in London after claiming victory and securing 'legally binding changes' to the Irish border backstop after a dramatic last-minute dash to Strasbourg. The Prime Minister was seen smiling as she was swept into Downing Street in the early hours of this morning - but whether her breakthrough will convince Brexiteers and the DUP to vote through her deal is still uncertain. Last night, at a joint press conference with Jean-Claude Juncker, Mrs May said her deal 'delivers on the decision of the British people to leave the European Union' and appealed for MPs to back it at 7pm tonight. Tory Brexiteer rebels and the DUP have worked through the night before deciding whether to back the deal when it is voted on. The changes fall short of Mrs May's promises to reopen the deal demands for the backstop to be scrapped altogether.

USA - A March 8, 2019 report from National Public Radio (NPR) follows another by NBC News with sensational and misleading claims that satellite imagery released by private corporations with contractual ties to government defense and intelligence agencies show imminent preparations by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) to engage in missile testing or the launch of a satellite from their facilities in Sanumdong, North Korea. An examination of the photos provided shows absolutely no indication of such activity. These contentions are not supported in substance by any tangible facts. As claims and pressure continue to build on President Donald Trump to abandon the peace process, there are multiple factions of the United States government who are running a real risk of behaving in manners which could be interpreted as open sedition or refusal to carry out the stated goals and policies of the President.

UK - Dangerous sewage pathogens have been found “hitch-hiking” on plastic litter washed up on some of Scotland’s finest bathing beaches, raising concerns from scientists the phenomenon could have far-reaching implications for human health worldwide. The findings, by the University of Stirling, have confirmed environmentalists’ fears that ubiquitous, persistent and tiny plastic beads, or “nurdles”, found on beaches and in rivers and seas around the world, act as rafts for harmful bacteria, transporting them from sewage outfalls and agricultural runoff to bathing waters and shellfish beds. The findings raise the potential for “cholera in India to be transported and washed up on a shore in the USA”, according to Dr Richard Quilliam, the study’s principal investigator.

USA - The world’s first genderless voice has been created for use in virtual assistants to end what its creators claim is the “exclusion” of non-binary users by products such as Apple's Siri or Amazon's Alexa. Named Q, the invention is also hoped to stop people giving orders to a digital device that often responds in a woman's voice, which its designers say can reinforce sexist stereotypes. "There is no reason why we need to reproduce old-fashioned human notions in new technologies,” said Professor Gina Neff, associate professor at the Department of Sociology at Oxford University.

USA - There is a real crisis in the fertility rate which has fallen to such a low level that all the socialism going forward will simply collapse. What used to be the Baby Boom is now being called the “Baby Bust,” which means that in all first-world countries there is a real crisis for they have insufficient children to maintain their population size. This has been one excuse for allowing the refugees into Europe.

SWITZERLAND - Artificial intelligence (AI) generated 40,000 stories on Switzerland's 2018 elections in minutes. 'Robo-journalism' is on the rise according to a media academic who has been studying the use of AI to produce news stories. Software that is able to do this has been available for nearly a decade, but is becoming more prevalent in news rooms, they say. These bots are designed to free reporters from writing 'monotonous' stories that can be easily altered by simply inserting new figures - including sports and election results. But some fear they may one day overtake the role of traditional newsroom writers and become an everyday feature of generating news content.

MIDDLE EAST - A senior reporter for the Al Riyadh, one of Saudi Arabia's most prominent newspapers, claimed that the US President Donald Trump's "Deal of the Century" will divide Jerusalem. The reporter Hadeel Oueis wrote on her twitter account that "The Old City of Jerusalem will be divided in half: the Arab and Christian quarters will go to the PA [Palestinian Authority], while the Jewish and Armenian quarters will fall under Israeli control."

VATICAN - In 2015 Pope Francis addressed the UN General Assembly in New York shortly before member states unanimously adopted Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. Fast forward to 2019 and the Pope was in the Vatican on Friday where he greeted participants taking part in a two day international conference entitled, “Religions and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Listening to the cry of the earth and of the poor”.

MIDDLE EAST - The winds of war are blowing once again, and it isn’t going to take much to spark a major conflict in the Middle East. This week is the eighth anniversary of the beginning of the civil war in Syria, and after the nightmare that the people of Syria have been through, you would think that the Assad regime would be eager for peace. But instead, Assad appears to be ready to go for broke. If Syria can spark a Middle East war that results in the complete destruction of Israel, Assad would be remembered as a hero in the Islamic world forever.

MIDDLE EAST - The ruling by the Palestinian Scholars' Association is also aimed at sending a message to the US administration that the Palestinians and the Muslims will have nothing to do with the "Deal of the Century." Moreover, it serves as a reminder that even if some Arabs do sign peace treaties with Israel, there will always be those Muslims who will denounce them as "traitors" and accuse them of acting against the Koran and the rulings of Islam. Abbas, meanwhile, is acutely aware that Muslims will condemn him - and perhaps issue a fatwa calling for his death - if he ever dares to make peace with the Jews. That suspicion might explain his recent comment during a visit to Egypt, when he was reported to have said that he does not intend to end his life as a traitor by making concessions to Israel. It now remains to be seen whether the Arab and Islamic world will endorse Abbas's stance and allow themselves to be intimidated by Palestinian Islamic clerics.