USA - Winter's brutal assault continued Wednesday night as another snowstorm roared its way across the nation through the end of the week, hitting areas where millions were already without electricity in record-breaking cold. More than 100 million Americans are in the path of the storm as it tracks from the southern Plains to the East Coast over the next few days, the National Weather Service said. But the nation's heartland will get some relief over the weekend, the weather service reported, as the frigid air will begin to moderate over the next couple days. But first, much of Texas and the Southeast will have to endure heavy snowfall and "ice accumulations of a light glaze to a few hundredths of an inch" through Thursday. Heavy snow is forecast to move work its way as far north as southern New England on Thursday. More than 30 people have died because of the intense cold and a series of storms that moved from coast to coast since the weekend.

EUROPE - Mount Etna in Sicily, Europe’s tallest volcano and one of its most active, has erupted for the second time in as many days, with a stream of molten rock and a massive ash cloud tinged red by the sun captured in remarkable footage. The volcano came alive around 4pm local time on Tuesday, according to the Italian Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, while the Volcanic Ash Advisory Center in Toulouse said the blast launched ash over 6 miles (10 kilometers) into the sky, warning of “very strong ash emission.” Tuesday’s activity marked Etna’s second eruption this week alone, with tremors increasing in the early hours of Monday before lava finally blasted from the volcano in the afternoon. Standing nearly 11,000 feet (3,300 meters) tall, Mount Etna is one of Europe’s most active volcanoes, erupting dozens of times over the last century.

USA - The world’s third-richest man is shifting from preaching about pandemics to promoting his new book about climate change, urging humanity to embrace the sci-fi idea of fake meat in order to save the earth from greenhouse gases. The idea is to lower the emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas produced by grazing animals such as cows or sheep as they digest grass. Praising the technological achievements in agriculture and bioengineering, Gates said there was no other way but to eliminate livestock, even as he admitted that telling people “You can’t have cows anymore” is a “politically unpopular approach to things.” Unpopular is one way to describe it, judging by the reaction to his proposals, which have ranged from telling Gates to “take a hike” to much less printable things.

AFRICA - The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned several African nations about possible Ebola infections after new cases were found in Guinea and DR Congo. The last major outbreak in the region killed more than 10,000 people. “We have already alerted the six countries around [them], including of course Sierra Leone and Liberia, and they are moving very fast to prepare and be ready and to look for any potential infection,” WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris said. Guinea has borders with Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, Mali, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone. An Ebola outbreak was declared in the southern part of Guinea on Sunday – the first time the deadly disease has been recorded in the country since 2016. New cases were also reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where a vaccination campaign was launched.

ISRAEL - Israel may ignore US President Joe Biden in dealing with Iran if he pushes toward reviving the nuclear deal, according to Ambassador to the US Gilad Erdan. Biden campaigned on restoring the Iran deal, even though it allowed the regime to pursue nuclear weapons after roughly a decade, and did not include provisions preventing Iran’s development of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles or its support for terrorist proxies in the region and around the world.

USA - The Pentagon, in the three weeks that Joe Biden has been president, has turned the department’s attention from outside threats towards potential threats from inside the military. Former President Donald Trump’s first military priorities were to rebuild the military, defeat the Islamic State, and focus on the threat from China. President Joe Biden, in contrast, while continuing the focus on China, has taken a number of actions to promote social justice inside the Pentagon. His first military-related executive order was to overturn Trump’s transgender policy.

USA - From National File: Vice President Kamala Harris is now taking calls from world leaders in lieu of Joe Biden, first speaking to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on February 2, and just yesterday speaking with French President Emmanuel Macron. It is unclear if Joe Biden's early bed time of 7 pm, revealed by CNN, could be the reason why. On February 2, "Vice President Kamala Harris spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday, marking her first call to a foreign leader since entering the White House."

USA - Billionaire Bill Gates may have been one of former President Donald J Trump’s biggest critics, but he is completely on board with Joe Biden’s radical environmental policies. The Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist praised Biden’s efforts to destroy the domestic fossil fuels industry in order to replace it with alternatives under the guise of eco-friendly “sustainability” during an appearance on “60 Minutes” on Sunday. During his chat with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Gates touted what he calls a “zero carbon future” that over 30 years will require “global cooperation on a scale the world has never seen”. This is music to the ears of those who are rushing to dismantle Trump’s America first agenda.

USA - It appears that the ‘We the People’ petition system has been taken off the White House website. The system has been around for many years. At any given time, hundreds of petitions were active. If you get 100,000 signatures, the White House is supposed to give an answer. You may remember that there was an active “Free Assange” petition that the Obama Administration was obligated to answer (and gave a bad answer). When Trump took office, he briefly discontinued it but put it back up after a media uproar. Now it appears the Biden White House has removed it. I have seen nothing about this in the media. When I Google “White House Petition System Down” and other similar searches, I only get 4-year-old articles about the time that Trump temporarily disabled it.

USA - At least nine people have died in the most brutal winter storm to sweep the United States in decades which has caused rolling power outages in Texas and sent icy tornadoes tearing across the South. Three people were killed in North Carolina in the early hours of Tuesday when a tornado ripped through Brunswick County, destroying homes, downing power lines and snapping trees in half.In Texas, wind turbines - which account for a fifth of the state's energy - have frozen solid and contributed to the state's power woes with temperatures plummeting to a bitter -20F. More than 4 million people in the Lone Star State were without power last night and many residents took desperate refuge in their cars for warmth as their homes turned to ice blocks. President Joe Biden declared an emergency in Texas on Sunday night to pledge federal aid to the state. In Georgia and Florida, several homes and buildings were damaged and at least four people were injured, following a series of tornadoes that touched down throughout Monday afternoon.

USA - There are signs that the food inflation that’s gripped the world over the past year, raising prices of everything from shredded cheese to peanut butter, is about to get worse. The Covid-19 pandemic upended food supply chains, paralyzing shipping, sickening workers that keep the world fed and ultimately raising consumer grocery costs around the globe last year. Now farmers - especially ones raising cattle, hogs and poultry - are getting squeezed by the highest corn and soybean prices in seven years. It’s lifted the costs of feeding their herds by 30% or more. To stay profitable, producers including Tyson Foods Inc are increasing prices, which will ripple through supply chains and show up in the coming months as higher price tags for beef, pork and chicken around the world. As for what’s driving the feed prices, that’s due to bad crop weather shrinking world harvests. Demand is also increasing.

RUSSIA – It was Putin’s speech that brought down the house of cards that is the agenda of the WEF [World Economic Forum]. Putin hadn’t spoken [at DAVOS] for nearly a decade. In a time when WEF - controlled puppets dominate positions of power in Europe, the UK, Canada and now the US, Putin walked into Virtual Davos and dumped his coffee on the carpet. In terms I can only describe as unfailingly polite, Putin told Klaus Schwab and the WEF that their entire idea of the Great Reset is not only doomed to failure but runs counter to everything modern leadership should be pursuing. Putin literally laughed at the idea of the Fourth Industrial Revolution – Schwab’s idea of a planned society through AI, robots and the merging of man and machine.

EUROPE - Years of propaganda about ‘stronger together’ have been blown out of the water by the hapless president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. One of the deepest-held beliefs – ‘prejudices’ might be a better word – about the European Union is that it makes its member states stronger. It is in the name of this alleged greater strength that national sovereignty is sacrificed, on the basis that – as Emmanuel Macron claimed again in his New Year address on 31 December 2020 – the stronger and more united the EU is, the better it is for its member states.

USA - Studies reveal that child poverty in the United States jumped nearly 10% in 2020, meaning 1 in 6 children lives in poverty in the richest country in the world. If the US gave direct payments to parents totaling $85 billion - or just 0.4% of its GDP - the child poverty rate would plummet 75%, and affect only 1 in 20 children.

AFRICA - The World Health Organization (WHO) is heightening its readiness and response to an Ebola outbreak in the West African nation of Guinea after eight infections and at least four deaths were linked to the deadly disease there. The Guinean officials on Sunday sounded the alarm over the new outbreak, with National Health Security Agency Chief Sakoba Keita calling the problem an “epidemic situation.” The cases appear to be connected to a burial of a nurse who died a few weeks ago, soon after becoming ill. Keita claimed that “among those who took part in the burial, eight people showed symptoms: diarrhea, vomiting, and bleeding,” while “three of them died and four others are in hospital.” It is the first time in five years that Ebola has been linked to deaths in Guinea. A 60-year-old woman had died in North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo, becoming the second confirmed Ebola fatality in a week amid fears of a new epidemic after an earlier outbreak was declared 'over' in November.