ISRAEL - Israel’s politicians have until Wednesday to beat the clock. If one of the 120 Knesset members garners a 61-seat majority for forming a government in the next two days – a task which defeated prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Benny Gantz – Israel will be saved from its third general election in a year. If not, the two main parties have agreed to the Knesset setting election day on March 2.

SOUTH AFRICA - Cries of desperation, long early-morning queues, frantic calls and persistent knocking on doors of Gift of the Givers team members; communities are at a loss what to do as dam after dam, river after river and borehole after borehole shuts down. Add to that load shedding. Small town economies dependent on festive season tourists are at their wits’ end as water is simply not available to service paying guests. This challenging scenario is about to become a nightmare as thousands of economically active citizens return home to the Eastern Cape in the coming days. Water demands are going to increase exponentially, amplifying the expanding crisis. Government funding is no more a priority, it is way beyond the urgency and emergency phase.

NEW ZEALAND – New Zealand police have said they do not believe there are any more survivors on White Island after a huge volcanic eruption left at least five dead and 20 missing. Police said more casualties were feared with rescue services unable to reach White Island as it remained too dangerous after the eruption of the volcano there at about 2.11pm (1.11am GMT) spewed a plume of ash thousands of feet into the air. About 50 people, New Zealanders as well as foreign tourists, were feared to have been nearby and several were seen near the rim of the crater minutes before the eruption. Officers said in a statement that “no signs of life had been seen at any point. “Police believe that anyone who could have been taken from the island alive was rescued at the time of the evacuation. Based on the information we have, we do not believe there are any survivors on the island.”

NEW ZEALAND – New Zealand has been hit once again by a natural disaster after a magnitude-5.3 earthquake shook the nation’s North Island today. The nation has been shaken by a magnitude-5.3 earthquake less than a day after the terrifying eruption of a volcano on White Island, off the nation’s coast. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the quake has reportedly produced strong shaking and struck at 12.58pm (11.58pm GMT) local time on Tuesday.

GERMANY - German demand, and German money, has propped up the eurozone. Now Its main industry is in freefall. Its political system is descending into chaos. The banking system is in crisis, and consumer demand is stuck in the doldrums. With every week that passes there are more and more signs of a deep malaise in its economy. The nation once known as Europe’s powerhouse, and the locomotive of the entire eurozone, is slowly turning into its sick man instead. That is partly a German story, of course, but it is also a global one. When the world’s fourth-largest economy runs into trouble, it has repercussions far beyond its own borders. Such as? Germany’s stagnating economy will make the eurozone more unstable than ever, it will make the European Union more protectionist, it will destabilise global trade at the worst possible time, and may well trigger a financial crisis.

It is going to be one of the most dangerous trends of the 2020s.

FRANCE - France was in flames today due to violent anti-Macron protesters tearing through the streets of Nantes and Paris in the 56th consecutive week of riots. Shocking videos show a mass of so-called Yellow Vest protesters flooding streets in the French capital and setting roads and monuments on fire as demonstrations marked their one year anniversary since demonstrations were triggered by young French President Emmanuel Macron’s crippling 23 percent fuel hike.

IRAN - Iranians have been angrily protesting since last month over fuel price hikes. In a statement, the United Nations human rights office claimed to have “verified video footage” showing security forces firing on protesters with seeming intent to kill. The US envoy to Tehran, Brian Hook, claimed the brutal police crackdown has resulted in up 1,000 deaths. He told reporters the anti-government demonstrations were "the worst political crisis the regime has faced in its 40 years". Mr Hook added: “These protests have made clear what Secretary Mike Pompeo and I have been saying for quite some time. The Iranian people want the regime to focus on investing in people, not proxies. They are sick of the regime squandering its wealth on proxy warfare, which leads only to economic pressure and diplomatic isolation. Unfortunately, this is exactly what the Iranian regime continues to do."

HONG KONG - Hundreds of thousands of protesters have filled the streets of Hong Kong in a mass show of support for an anti-government movement that shows no signs of flagging as it enters a seventh month. The march on Sunday was mostly peaceful, in a rare break from the escalating violent scenes of recent weeks. Buoyed by the landslide victory of pro-democracy politicians in the district elections two weeks ago, protesters were in high spirits, and there was a relaxed, carnival-like atmosphere. Some chanted “Five demands, not one less!”, referring to a set of as-yet-unfulfilled political demands, including democratic reforms and an independent investigation into police brutality.

AUSTRALIA - Australia’s biggest city has been shrouded in hazardous smoke for the past week, as wildfires burning across the country’s drought-stricken east coast are — in some cases — becoming too big to put out. The fires are turning the daytime sky in Sydney orange and causing air quality to dip to levels more often seen in cities like Delhi and Beijing. Schools are keeping students inside during recess and cancelling sports and other outdoor activities. Satellite images show plumes of smoke stretching more than 1,200 miles away to New Zealand. “The massive [New South Wales state] fires are in some cases just too big to put out at the moment,” the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said. Officials are particularly concerned about a number of fires around Sydney, the state capital where about five million people live.

ZIMBABWE - One of southern Africa’s biggest tourist attractions has seen an unprecedented decline this dry season. For decades Victoria Falls, where southern Africa’s Zambezi river cascades down 100 metres into a gash in the earth, have drawn millions of holidaymakers to Zimbabwe and Zambia for their stunning views. But the worst drought in a century has slowed the waterfalls to a trickle. Zimbabwe and Zambia have suffered power cuts as they are heavily reliant on hydropower from plants at the Kariba dam, which is on the Zambezi river upstream of the waterfalls. Scientists are cautious about categorically blaming climate change. There is always seasonal variation in levels.

NEW ZEALAND - New Zealand has been hit by a weekend of severe storms, with landslides and flooding in the South Island cutting off towns and trapping an estimated 1,000 foreign tourists. Most are stuck on the west coast in the towns of Fox Glacier and Franz Josef, according to the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management, and some have been forced to sleep in their cars, and are said to be scared and tired. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had established contact with the tourists, who have been stranded by flooding and landslides that some fear may take months to clear. More than 300,000 lightning strikes hit the country and its surrounding waters on Sunday alone, reported research organisation NIWA.

GERMANY - Not just Deutsche Bank! Germany heading to economic collapse & stock market crash. Germany’s economic indicators across the board are shrinking. And with Merkel masking a massive tax raise as a political cave to the rising Greens party, the future for Germany’s economic growth looks terrible. Germany is a Dead Economy Walking. The implosion of Deutschebank, then the deluge. Wiping out the EU. Trump will not let the FED bail them out this time. Germany is doing to Europe what China is doing to the world. Germany is the core element of the EU economy. This is not news. What is news is that Germany’s economy is going down the toilet.

GERMANY - - As Cornelius Riese, co-CEO of Frankfurt-based DZ Bank AG (Germany’s second-largest by assets), observed, negative rates indeed “have a huge impact on banks.” Riese ventured to offer some gentle criticism of Draghi & Co’s grand policy experiment: “Maybe at the end of the story, in three to five years, we will notice it was a historical mistake.” The ECB's imposition of negative interest rates have created an "absurd situation" in which banks don't want to hold deposits, rages UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti, arguing that this policy is hurting social systems and savings rates.

GERMANY - The Nazi regime murdered an estimated 1.1 million people, the vast majority of them Jewish, at Auschwitz-Birkenau. What did the chancellor say? Mrs Merkel was accompanied on her visit by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and a death camp survivor. She walked through the notorious "Arbeit macht frei" (work sets you free) gates at Auschwitz and then held a minute's silence at the so-called Black Wall, where thousands of prisoners were executed. She then moved to the Birkenau site where she gave her speech. "Remembering the crimes… is a responsibility which never ends. It belongs inseparably to our country," Mrs Merkel said. "To be aware of this responsibility is part of our national identity, our self-understanding as an enlightened and free society… a democracy." Germany continued to have "deep shame" for what happened in Auschwitz-Birkenau. "There are no words to express our sorrow," Mrs Merkel said. Major events are planned for the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops on 27 January.

UK - You might think that come December 12, if it’s a bit cold and wet, there’s not much harm staying home. Or you might assume because you’re in a “safe” seat, there’s no point in voting. This is despite the reality that just one vote can swing an election under the First Past the Post voting system. But now, there’s another incentive: your absence will be recorded. The Electoral Commission compiles a list of voters called the marked register, which indicates which voters cast their vote and which didn’t.