UK - “It’s like a vegetable treasure hunt,” says Jenni Duncan, 54, ankle deep in mud, looking at the rows of cauliflower plants stretching out in front of her as the Cornish drizzle gets heavier by the minute. This field near Hayle in west Cornwall has already been harvested, but not all the produce met supermarket standards and so some was left unpicked. This is where Duncan and her team of volunteers come in, working down the rows, peeling back the leaves of plants that have been left behind, hoping to find small but perfectly formed cauliflowers still tucked deep inside. They are resurrecting the ancient practice of gleaning – harvesting surplus crops to redistribute to those in need. It was common from biblical times up until the 18th century, when landowners began closing off land and restricting access to fields. This is the first time Cornish grower Simon Whear has invited gleaners into his fields, having been contacted by the local group only a couple of weeks ago. “There’s always some left, and I th ought this would be a good way for people to make use of it. It’s better that it gets picked than just ploughed back into the field,”said Whear.

JAPAN - Japan has reserved the right to conduct pre-emptive air-strikes against enemies, with Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi making the case that such attacks could fall under the country’s strict post-World War II ‘self-defence’ policy. During a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday, Kishi said he would not rule out air-strikes on foreign soil if they were necessary to protect Japan from a hypothetical missile attack. Kishi argued that “it would fall within the scope of self-defence” to send Japanese planes into an enemy airspace to strike targets, however he pledged that Japan would not “possess military capabilities that by themselves would annihilate an opponent,” such as intercontinental ballistic missiles. Tensions between Japan and China have been on the rise in recent years, as the two nations are engaged in a long-running spat over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. Tokyo has drawn up a draft plan with Americans to jointly defend Taiwan, which Beijing claims is an integral part of Chinese territory.

UKRAINE - Vice President Kamala Harris publicly warned Vladimir Putin of the 'swift and severe' consequences he will face if Russia further invades Ukraine and branded him a 'lying propagandist' after a car bomb destroyed a pipeline forcing the evacuation of 700,000. In a speech early Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, Harris said the United States and its allies were prepared to impose significant and unprecedented economic costs on Russia if it further invades Ukraine, Reuters reported. 'Let me be clear, I can say with absolute certainty, if Russia further invades Ukraine, the United States together with our allies and partners will impose significant and unprecedented economic costs,' Harris said at the annual conference of the world's top national security officials. The Vice President said the US and its allies has tried to engage with Russia to find diplomatic solution but their effort have not been met by the Kremlin in good faith. 'Russia continues to say it is ready to talk while at the same time it narrows the avenues for diplomacy,' Harris said. 'Their actions simply do not match their words.'

CHINA - China has doubled down on refusing to stick to its climate pledges by announcing Monday it will be expanding operations of coal-fired power plants across the country. In a Chinese State Council meeting chaired by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, China reaffirmed its position to increase its use of coal powered energy to “safeguard power usage in both production and daily life”, the official Chinese state press agency Xinhua reports. China is the world’s largest polluter emitting an estimated 27 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases in 2019, with the next largest emitter America only releasing 11 per cent of the world’s pollution – less than 50 per cent of China’s total emissions. Over the course of the pandemic, China has increased coal output – hitting a ten-year-high of using over four billion metric tons of coal in 2021. While Western populations are being forced to tighten their belts and deal with the expensive ramifications of green-energy policies, Chinese President Xi Jinping has told his government that any efforts to reduce China’s emissions should not interfere with the nation’s economic growth – indicating China will not be making any meaningful changes to curb its emissions in the near future.

CANADA - Canada Is a police state at this time… it’s like within a police state. There’s no rule of law, it’s now in the hands of …the Emergency Act, which is the War Measures Act… Just by donating $25 to the truckers’ convoy puts you as an enemy of the state. It sounds like Cuba or China, that’s kinda what’s happening in Canada… It’s a civil war is what it is. They will finish this job whatever it takes. I was just talking to a driver who said… guns were drawn…

USA - Thursday, conservative talker Mark Levin railed against the Democratic Party during an appearance on FNC’s “Hannity.” Levin accused those within the Democratic Party of hating America and criticized the party ideology for hurting middle-class Americans.

Levin: I’ll tell you what’s going on in this country. The largest political party in this country hates America. They hate our security. They hate our Constitution. They hate our Founders. They hate our Framers. They hate our monuments. They hate our history. They hate our family structure. The Democrat Party hates our military, hates our cops. The Democrat Party is selling us out to the communist Chinese, the fascistic Russians, the fascistic Iranians, and the inbred over there in North Korea. The Democrat Party is a force for bad in this country. They never promote liberty. They never promote individualism. We now have an individual in Canada who reflects the same ideology. We actually now have a totalitarian regime on our northern border. Let’s not fool ourselves, what that prime minister is doing to the people of Canada is a disgusting disgrace.

EUROPE - Underground gas storage facilities (UGS) in Europe were 95.3% empty as of February 17, Russia’s state energy giant and major gas exporter Gazprom said on Saturday, citing data from Gas Infrastructure Europe. This means that Europe now has only 4.7% of its gas reserves left for the remainder of the winter season. The European Union, however, this week claimed that its supplies were sufficient to last several more weeks in the event that Russia stops its gas flow to the bloc amid tensions over Ukraine. Russian gas supplies to European countries had already started to fall in mid-2021, and the decline accelerated at the beginning of 2022. Gazprom, however, repeatedly insisted that it is still supplying Europe with gas in strict accordance with existing contracts. According to the Commission, until recently, the EU satisfied almost a quarter (24%) of its energy needs with gas, 90% of which was imported. Some 40% of its imports came from Gazprom. Despite this, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, on Saturday called Gazprom’s supply policy intentionally harmful.

UK - The everyday term has been replaced with “grown-ups” in a bid to avoid discriminating against so-called “non-traditional” families. According to parents from the four primary schools affected by the change in terminology, children have now been left confused over the move. St Luke's Primary School in Brighton states on its website: “We have an Equalities Language Code for staff, for example, to value all families we never refer to mums and dads and instead talk about grown-ups.” Elm Grove Primary School maintains in its Equalities Statement: “We try to talk about our grown-ups rather than our mums and dads to acknowledge the different family groupings our pupils live in.” The same guidance has been implemented into Carlton Hill Primary School. One parent vented their frustration at the move. They said: “It's very confusing for us adults, never mind the kids. They just don't understand why the teachers can't call their mums or dads, mum or dad?” “This is just madness, where will it stop?”

US inflation just hit 7.5 per cent, the highest in 40 years.
UK inflation, now 5.5 per cent and the highest in 30 years, is expected to reach 7 per cent by spring.
EU inflation is 5.1 per cent.
All these indices are headed in one direction. Inflation is often described as a tax, but I have a better word for it: STEALING.

EL SALVADOR - El Salvador's president and the Chinese ambassador traded flatteries this month as they broke ground on a new national library, one of a slew of gifts China has promised this small mountainous nation as part of its vigorous quest to gain influence across Central America. When the seven-storey library is finished, it will loom above San Salvador's central square, a symbol of China's growing presence in the region and a reminder that as the relationship between the US and El Salvador has chilled, El Salvador has found refuge in China's deep pockets and warm embrace. A new Cold War is brewing in Latin America between the US and China amid a shifting global order driven more by economics and technology than by politics and ideology.

EL SALVADOR - El Salvador is a sovereign country and not a colony of Washington, which has no right to meddle in its decision to adopt Bitcoin, President Nayib Bukele said on Wednesday in response to a bill proposed by several US senators alarmed at the prospect. “OK boomers,” Bukele tweeted on Wednesday evening. “We are not your colony, your back yard or your front yard. Stay out of our internal affairs. Don’t try to control something you can’t control.” He added that the US has “zero jurisdiction” in El Salvador, a sovereign and independent nation. Bukele, elected in 2019, once described himself as “the world’s coolest dictator” in his Twitter biography, but now styles himself as the “CEO of El Salvador.” He was responding to a statement by three US senators – two Republicans and a Democrat – who are concerned about the country’s adoption of Bitcoin and the “potential risks to the US financial system” that it might represent.

IRAN - The facility in Natanz is built deep under a massive mountain, making it extremely difficult for the IDF to ever bomb it. Iran is developing a new nuclear threat that could be a game-changer – and which will continue to proceed regardless of whether there is a nuclear deal or not. The new enormous nuclear threat is a new underground facility Iran is digging and building in the Natanz area which goes so deep under a mountain so large that it will leave the Fordow facility in the dust in terms of how difficult it would be for the IDF to strike it. Why no one is talking about it – other than Albright – is probably a mix of it being an issue that may not fully mature until 2023 and that there are few good options for addressing.

USA - Elections to the San Francisco Board of Education are not normally national bellwethers. The city is a proud symbol of liberalism, not a swing district, and school-board elections — as Thomas Fuller, The Times’s San Francisco bureau chief, notes — “have for decades been obscure sideshows to the more high-profile political contests.” But the recall election this week that ousted three board members wasn’t about only local politics. It also reflected a trend: Many Americans, even in liberal places, seem frustrated by what they consider a leftward lurch from parts of the Democratic Party and its allies. This frustration spans several issues, including education, crime and Covid-19.

EUROPE - Poland and Hungary are now well and truly at the mercy of the unelected Eurocrats. Both are accused of flouting European Union law, and on Wednesday, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) rejected their legal challenge against the mechanism that allows Brussels to withhold funds from member states. Poland is alleged to be breaking the EU’s rule-of-law because of the lack of independence of its judiciary, and Hungary is claimed to be in breach on the grounds of corruption. The ECJ judgement stated that “the Court dismisses the actions brought by Hungary and Poland in their entirety,” and when it comes to democratic principles “the European Union must be able to defend those values, within the limits of its powers.” As a result, billions of euros of Covid recovery funds can now be withheld from Warsaw and Budapest.

USA - The number of adult Americans who identify as something other than heterosexual has risen to a record 7.1%, a new Gallup phone survey revealed on Thursday. The metric has more than doubled since 2012, the first year the company started tracking such data. Then, 3.5% of respondents who volunteered their sexual orientation and/or gender identity said they were part of the LGBTQ community. The increase reflects a wider relevance of such identities among younger generations, the polling agency said. Among GenZs, or people born between 1997 and 2003, 20.8% of people identified as LGBTQ. For comparison, only 2.6% of Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, responded that way.