USA - A widespread effort is underway within the Biden administration to create special lists that track federal employees or applicants who seek religious exemptions. Fifty-five departments and agencies within the Biden administration have created 57 rule changes to track federal employees seeking different types of exemptions, according to the Liberty Counsel Action (LCA). The government watchdog revealed Thursday that some of the rules apply to COVID-19 vaccine exemptions. Others track all exemptions, such as an employee or applicant seeking accommodation from working on the Sabbath or Sunday. Some even track visitors to their buildings or events.

UK - Why are we paying billions to import all this energy when we are sitting on our own goldmine? If Ofgem’s decision yesterday to hike domestic energy bills from April by almost £700 confirmed one thing for us, it should be that now, more than ever, we must rapidly work towards energy security. Indeed, it doesn’t have to be this way. As British households worry how they are going to keep warm, Americans remain as happy as Larry. In the US electricity prices currently average $0.15 (11.2p) per kWh (kilowatt-hour) – little more than half the average of $0.28 (20.6p) per kWh in Britain. And that is before you account for Ofgem’s price rise. So why is it so expensive over here?The answer is prices are kept affordable for Americans because of an energy policy which prioritises self-sufficiency. By exploiting vast shale gas reserves, America escapes the whims of international markets. Europe and the UK, on the other hand, now find themselves trapped in a perilous price hike. And yet, this mess makes little sense when Britain is sitting on ample gas, oil and coal reserves.

UK - Britain’s Ministry of Defence has released its space defense strategy, which raises the alarming specter of an “exo-atmospheric nuclear attack.” However, the document offers few concrete proposals to counter such a threat. Released on Tuesday, the UK’s ‘Defence Space Strategy’ document describes space as a potential future battlefield, rife with threats ranging from cyber attacks and anti-satellite dazzling lasers, all the way up to an “Exo-atmospheric Nuclear Attack.” Such an attack, presumably launched from a satellite in orbit, would be a “permanent kill event,” the report states. However, it does not elaborate on the likelihood of this kind of attack, whether Britain’s adversaries are anywhere close to possessing such capabilities, or what the term “permanent kill event” means. The latest report describes Russia and China as “international threats,” citing both nations’ testing of anti-satellite missiles in recent years. In particular, the report called out Russia for leaving a trail of space debris behind after a test last year. However, similar tests have been carried out by the US as far back as the 1980s and by India in 2019, with neither mentioned in the MoD’s report.

USA - The Biden Administration is working to force more insurance companies to cover transgender surgeries. Such genital, breast, and facial surgery, as well as hormone therapy and more, would be considered medically necessary for those wishing to undergo the sex-changing procedure. Discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability is prohibited in federally funded healthcare facilities under the Affordable Care Act, passed during the Obama Administration. A proposed rule, issued by the US Department of Health and Human Services on January 5, would add “sexual orientation and gender identity” to this list. The rule “places ideology ahead of sound medicine,” the Ethics and Public Policy Center argued in a comment Thursday opposing the rule. It “is without legal support, contradicts long-standing scientific understandings of the human person, attempts to evade court injunctions, promotes harm to patients (especially minors), tramples religious freedom,” and more, according to the EPPC.

USA - The Texas grid may fail again this year, according to a local investigative journalist who this week raised the alarm about the grid's state of preparedness ahead of an Arctic weather front. "This is not a good start. Tried checking @ERCOT_ISO dashboard about grid conditions and it's down. Tried checking hourly resource outage data, that's down too," Jeremy Rogalski from K-HOU TV tweeted on Wednesday. He later added that he had gotten in touch with a spokesperson for the Energy Reliability Council of Texas who'd told him that the grid operator was having issues from an upgrade made back in November. Alarm is the appropriate reaction to such news after last year, the grid failed so spectacularly that it caused massive blackouts, with some people remaining without power for several days. The Texas Freeze of last year, as it came to be known, also knocked out power plants and oil and gas wells, causing the largest-ever oil production decline in US oil history.

USA - BLM ‘Week of Action’ Teaching Students Nationwide to Affirm Transgenderism, Disrupt Nuclear Family. Students across the country as young as kindergarten-age are learning that “everybody gets to choose their own gender” and are receiving kid-friendly lessons on disrupting “Western nuclear family dynamics” as part of this week’s national Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action. The activist-driven curriculum for the Week of Action, which kicked off Monday, is based off the 13 “Black Lives Matter Guiding Principles.” Those principles include a commitment to restorative justice, being transgender affirming and queer affirming, creating space for black families that is “free from patriarchal practices,” and “the disruption of Western nuclear family dynamics and a return to the ‘collective village’ that takes care of each other.” Black Lives Matter at School offers kid-friendly versions of the 13 principles designed for elementary and middle-school students.

USA - Everyday items, from grocery staples to home décor, are being priced more like airline tickets and gasoline, where the sticker prices can move frequently within hours or days. Retailers say the price moves are in response to rising production, labor and shipping costs, and continuing product shortages associated with the Covid-19 pandemic. The price changes are happening online as well as offline, especially among smaller retailers that have been wary of spending on pricey technology or frustrating customers, according to executives and analysts.

USA - A decline in morality has preceded the collapse of almost every great society throughout history. Moral decay is often cited as one of the primary reasons for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, the level of wickedness in ancient Greece reached a frightening crescendo before it finally fell, and the depravity of French aristocrats was so nauseating that ordinary citizens took them out into the streets and beheaded them during the French Revolution. Unfortunately, we have not learned from the lessons of the past, and so we appear doomed to repeat them.

EL SALVADOR - El Salvador President Nayib Bukele tweeted out on Monday wondering... “Is there a deliberate plan to destroy the United States from within? Why are the authorities and some of the media not even commenting on this things? Why are they letting their beautiful cities rot?” President Bukele tweeted. His comment was in response to a New York Post report on empty shelves at a Rite Aid store in New York City that will be closing soon due to shoplifters. America was once a great country but the Left’s acceptance of crime, destruction of our cities, and attacks on the police have resulted in the most homicides in several US cities in 2021. Democrat officials continue to allow looters to run wild and crime to skyrocket in New York and elsewhere. After the criminals were caught and arrested, charges were reduced to a misdemeanor, and the thieves were back on the streets in less than 24 hours to steal again! And thanks to Democrats and Joe Biden’s devastating policies, the US inflation measurement has reached its highest level in decades, since the early 1980’s.

USA - To put it mildly, these are scary times in Los Angeles. Since November, there have been dozens of dramatic smash-and-grab heists at Nordstrom, Louis Vuitton, Saks Fifth Avenue, and other high-end stores. The Grove, victim of several such “smash mob” attacks, started installing barbed-wire-like fencing around its property every night to deter invaders, while the Tony boutiques of Rodeo Drive have added dozens of security guards to patrol their floors. From South LA (where a CVS was ransacked by a mob of looters) to Studio City (where a man was attacked while taking out the garbage from his house, then tied up along with his disabled son and forced to watch while his home was plundered) to Hancock Park (where a mother pushing a baby in a stroller was robbed in her driveway and 24-year-old Brianna Kupfer was stabbed to death while working at a furniture store on North La Brea on January 13), you can all but smell the fear on the streets. Even in zip codes where violent crime was once unheard of, residents are starting to sweat.

USA - The gross federal debt of the United States has surpassed $30,000,000,000,000. Although the debt affects each of us, it may be difficult to put such a large number into perspective and fully understand its implications. America’s high and rising debt matters because it threatens our economic future… different ways of looking at the debt and its relationship to the economy, the budget, and American families. $30 Trillion is roughly the value of the economies of China, Japan, Germany and the UK. Within 10 years, the federal government will spend nearly as much on interest payments as it does on research and development, infrastructure and education – combined! At $30 trillion and rising, the #NationalDebt threatens our economic future. The interest that we pay on the #NationalDebt is now the fastest growing part of the budget.

USA - Facebook's owner Meta Platforms saw its stock market value slump by more than $230 billion (£169 billion) on Thursday, in a record daily loss for a US firm. Its shares fell 26.4% after quarterly figures disappointed investors. Meta also said that Facebook's daily active users (DAUs) had dropped for the first time in its 18-year history. The company's share price slide saw chief executive Mark Zuckerberg's net worth fall by $31 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The drop in Mr Zuckerberg's personal fortune was equivalent to the annual gross domestic product of Estonia. Even after that drop, Mr Zuckerberg has an estimated net worth of almost $90 billion, which means he is still one of the richest people in the world. It was the first time ever that this measure of activity on the world's biggest social network had gone into reverse.

SWEDEN - Britain, Denmark, Norway and now Sweden are exiting the pandemic panic and returning to normal. This sends a message to the rest of the world that nations and people can survive without dystopian policies to micromanage citizen behavior. Citizens of remaining nations will quickly see that they are being conned by tyrannical leaders. “It is time to open Sweden again,” said Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, announcing the restrictions would be removed from February 9. Among the measures and recommendations that will be lifted, Sweden will allow people to return to restaurants with no limitation on how many people can be there, how much space there should be or opening hours. Requirements for vaccine certificates and wearing face masks on public transportation will also be removed, as well as the recommendation to limit social contacts. On Tuesday, neighboring Denmark took the lead among European Union members by scrapping most restrictions. Hours later, Norway lifted its ban on serving alcohol after 11 pm and the cap on private gatherings of no more than 10 people.

USA - It’s time for America to leave NATO and for Europe to resolve their internal disputes. Since 1916 and the First World War, United States foreign policy has been dominated by Eurocentrism. Following the Second World War, America has been the military protector of Western Europe for 73 years through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO. Now the time has come to disband NATO and tell the countries of Europe, in particular Germany, that they are on their own, as this nation must focus on its ever-growing domestic problems and the global threat of Communist China. America leaving NATO will force Europe to confront the long-term viability of a German-dominated European Union and Russia’s ambitions. As well as come to the realization that Communist China is a far greater threat to Europe than their present-day internal squabbles.

RUSSIA - Hopes that rock-bottom relations between Moscow and Washington can be turned around are unlikely at present, a top Russian politician has claimed, arguing that only when a new world order is established will there be less conflict between the two states. Speaking as part of an interview with Ukraina.ru earlier this week, Aleksey Pushkov, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, who previously served as chairman of the State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee, cast his view on the current power dynamic on the world stage.