UK - Three Romanian migrants have been imprisoned for beating a man to death with shears and pick-axe handles in the street in Ilford, London. Fellow Romanian Sandel Serbu, 36, was ambushed by brothers Razvan Vladescu, 27, and Araman-Nardi Stoica, 25, and their relative Ionut Vasile, 28, according to an official statement from London’s Metropolitan Police Force. Vladescu and his accomplices tracked the unwitting Serbu and set upon him as he was heading into a shop to buy cigarettes, “repeatedly hitting him full-force in the head with their weapons.” The attack only came to an end when an ambulance crew who happened to be passing the scene on their way to another emergency intervened, but “their sirens and blue lights did little, if anything, to deter the attackers” at first, according to the prosecution.

ISRAEL - Though Israelis are scarcely surprised by the phenomenon of Palestinian terrorism, they were nonetheless sickened by the recent rape of a 19-year old girl, Ori Ansbacher, by Arafat Irfaiya, a 29-year old Palestinian Arab from Hebron. Upon capture by Israeli forces, Irfaiya made plain the motive underlying his foul deed when he told his interrogators, “I entered Israel with a knife because I wanted to become a martyr and murder a Jew.” Clearly unrepentant, Irfaiya, for good measure, smirked at TV cameras during his court remand hearing.

USA - Trump’s call to European countries to “take back” and prosecute jihadists captured in Syria has met quite a mixed reaction, with Germany expressing legal concerns over the move and Denmark rejecting it altogether. The bold demand was tweeted by the US president on Sunday. The options for Europe are simple – to take Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) fighters "back," or the US and its subordinate militants in Syria "will be forced to release them." The call was heard, yet some countries flatly rejected it. "We are talking about the most dangerous people in the world. We should not take them back," a spokesperson for Denmark's prime pinister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, said. The official described Trump's call as premature, claiming that the situation in Syria was far from stable.

USA - Facebook deliberately broke privacy and competition law and should urgently be subject to statutory regulation, according to a devastating parliamentary report denouncing the company and its executives as “digital gangsters”. The final report of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee’s 18-month investigation into disinformation and fake news accused Facebook of purposefully obstructing its inquiry and failing to tackle attempts by Russia to manipulate elections. “Democracy is at risk from the malicious and relentless targeting of citizens with disinformation and personalised ‘dark adverts’ from unidentifiable sources, delivered through the major social media platforms we use every day,” warned the committee’s chairman, Damian Collins.

INDIA - India accused its fellow nuclear power Pakistan of being behind a terrorist suicide bomb attack in Kashmir that killed at least 44 Indian security officers on Thursday, reportedly marking the deadliest attack in the disputed region in decades.

USA - Bills introduced in the Tennessee legislature would define gold and silver specie as legal tender and eliminate sales taxes levied on it. Passage of these bills would pave the way for Tennessee residents to use gold and silver in everyday transactions, a foundational step for the people to undermine the Federal Reserve’s monopoly on money. Senator Steve Southerland (Republican for Morristown) introduced Senate Bill 978 (SB978) on February 6. Representative Rick Eldridge (Republican for Morristown) introduced the House companion bill (HB1323) the same day. Titled the Tennessee Legal Tender Act, the legislation would make gold and silver legal tender in the state, meaning it would be recognized as a medium of exchange for the payment of debts and taxes. Practically speaking, gold and silver specie would be treated as money, putting it on par with Federal Reserve notes in Tennessee.

USA - Vaccine injury lawyer Robert F Kennedy Jr,& Del Bigtree, producer of the suppressed anti-vaccine documentary, Vaxxed and the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) are credited with this victory. They demanded the relevant government documents proving that all federally approved vaccines had been tested for quality over the past 32 years — and there were none.

USA - Dickinson College in Pennsylvania published an op-ed in its student newspaper claiming that the world needs to be saved from “the white man,” arguing that white men have “become obsolete” and “have yet to demonstrate any collective competence in treating people as human beings.” An op-ed entitled, “How Do We Save the World From the White Man?” was published Thursday in the student newspaper for Dickinson College, The Dickinsonian. In the piece, the author argues that “the idea of the white man” should be dismantled “wherever it tries to manifest itself.” Student Kevin Ssonko wrote his anti-white piece in response to the backlash that had been received in response to another op-ed published in the school’s student newspaper last week, entitled, “Should White Boys Still Be Allowed to Talk?”

EUROPE - Europeans want relations with Moscow to go back to normal, Russian FM Sergey Lavrov said after a long chain of meetings in Munich, Germany, adding that Europe is increasingly ready to listen to what the Kremlin has to say. The Russian delegation has held more than two dozens of “nonstop negotiations” with foreign officials over just two days at the Munich Security Conference.

GERMANY - German Chancellor Angela Merkel drew lengthy applause Saturday for her spirited defense of a multilateral approach to global affairs and support for Europe’s decision to stand by a nuclear deal with Iran. US Vice President Mike Pence was not among the impressed, however, and he doubled down on American criticism of Europe.

GERMANY - Angela Merkel has turned her fire on America’s “home alone” policies, saying multilateral bodies cannot simply be smashed up, and warned the US president, Donald Trump, that Europe must not be excluded from discussions on future nuclear disarmament, Syria or trade. Warning of a collapse of the international order into tiny parts, the German chancellor said: “We cannot just smash it. We need to cooperate.”

VATICAN - The Vatican hosts “one of the biggest homosexual communities in the world,” alleges French journalist Frédéric Martel in an upcoming book on the Catholic Church and homosexuality. The explosive exposé, titled In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy, will be released on February 21, the very day that Pope Francis has convoked leading bishops from around the world for a Vatican summit on clerical sex abuse.

USA - The United Kingdom and the United States have signed a Mutual Recognition Agreement to ensure British-American trade continues seamlessly after Brexit, undercutting EU loyalists who claimed it would be damaged. The United Kingdom trades with the United States, its largest single trade partner and number one source of inward investment, largely on World Trade Organization (WTO) terms — a so-called “No Deal” situation — as the European Union has failed to strike a bilateral agreement. This WTO-based relationship is supplemented by a number of mini-agreements on things like regulatory standards, however, which Remainers had hitherto used to claim Brexit would deal a blow to British-American commerce.

USA - “The young woman went off to college — which began, as it often does these days, with an invitation to state her name, sexual orientation and ‘pronouns.’ When her anxiety flared during her first semester, she and several of her friends decided their angst had a fashionable cause: ‘gender dysphoria.’ Within a year, the lawyer’s daughter had begun a course of testosterone. Her real drug — the one that hooked her — was the promise of a new identity. A shaved head, boys’ clothes and a new name formed the baptismal waters of a female-to-male rebirth.” Rapid-onset gender dysphoria, which has been described as a “contagion,” has caught up with more and more mothers who are shocked when their formerly feminine daughters suddenly come home from college with mustaches, acne, different demeanors — even their breasts removed.

UK - A UK government lawyer has said that “mother” is no longer a gender specific term preserved only for women. The comments were made during a High Court hearing where a ‘transgender’ man born a woman gave birth to a child and is seeking to be named the father, rendering the baby legally motherless, reports The Telegraph. Government lawyers earlier in the hearing referenced civil servants who had suggested the parent, referred to as ‘TT’, could be named on the child’s birth certificate as “male mother.” Ben Jaffey QC, representing government ministers, cited this document and said, “the status of a mother is no longer gender specific.”