The first is Germany’s relationship with the US, which is now under severe stress. The elephant in the room is Germany’s failure to increase its annual defense spending to 2% of GDP, as agreed at the 2014 NATO summit in Wales. For obvious historical reasons, Germany is hesitant to become Europe’s de facto military power.

The second big issue is US-EU relations. The immediate challenges facing America and Europe have changed over the past seven decades. Most recently, Russia has expanded its sphere of influence into Crimea, eastern Ukraine, and the Sea of Azov, and China has begun to assert economic and technological dominance in Eurasia. At the same time, Western democracies are struggling to deal with disruptions caused by globalization, migration, technology, and climate change.

This brings us to the third issue: Russia. Here, the EU’s pursuit of a balanced policy has created friction within the transatlantic alliance, as exemplified by the tensions over Nord Stream 2, a joint Russian-German pipeline project. In the German government’s view, Nord Stream 2 is fundamentally an economic issue. After all, German, French, and other European companies have invested heavily in the project; in any case, it would be a grave political mistake to intervene in the private European gas market.

The fourth issue is China, which has made clear that it seeks a revision of the international balance of power. For its part, the Trump administration rightly challenged China on trade. There can be no “fair trade” when a country that does not play by the same rules as everyone else organizes two-fifths of the global economy. China lavishes subsidies on its industries, limits access to its markets, and routinely violates intellectual-property rights.

The fifth major issue is Europe’s role in the wider world. If Europe does not wake up to the realities of the new Sino-American rivalry, it could find itself in a position of geopolitical irrelevance. In fact, there are already signs of Europe’s declining global significance. Wars and conflicts along the European periphery are increasingly being decided by other powers, with Europe playing no discernible role in their resolution. As NATO’s first secretary-general, Hastings Ismay, famously put it, the purpose of NATO was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”

Much has changed since the 1950s. Today, we Europeans are only gradually beginning to understand that we must adapt to the geopolitical realities of the twenty-first century. The Atlantic era is giving way to the Pacific era. Europeans must harbor no illusions that all will turn out well on its own. Now is the time to muster the courage and the will to take responsibility for our strategic interests.

However, as the latest Pentagon budget shows, no matter the revelations, there will be no reckoning when it comes to this country’s endless wars or its military establishment — not at a moment when President Donald Trump is sending yet more US military personnel into the Middle East and has picked a new fight with Iran. No less troubling: how few in either party in Congress are willing to hold the president and the Pentagon accountable for runaway defense spending or the poor performance that has gone with it.

Given the way the Pentagon has sunk taxpayer dollars into those endless wars, in a more reasonable world that institution would be overdue for a comprehensive audit of all its programs and a reevaluation of its expenditures. (It has, by the way, never actually passed an audit.) According to Brown University’s Costs of War Project, Washington has already spent at least $2 trillion on its war in Afghanistan alone and, as the Post made clear, the corruption, waste, and failure associated with those expenditures was (or at least should have been) mindboggling…

...a Congress that allows endless wars, terrible spending practices, and multiplying conflicts of interest is, as the history of the twenty-first century has shown us, a recipe for disaster.

But it is already too late, because cases have already been reported in other major Chinese cities, and the virus has also already traveled to a whole bunch of foreign countries via airplane. Cases have been reported in Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, the Philippines, Australia and now there has even been one case in the United States. It is being estimated that this virus has an incubation period of about a week, and so the truth is that countless others could be spreading it around right now without even realizing it.

We haven’t seen this sort of panic since the days of the bird flu scare, and Chinese citizens are demanding action.

Unfortunately, there isn’t that much that can be done at this point. Chinese officials are taking some steps to try to isolate Wuhan from the rest of the country, but many are skeptical that these measures will really make that much of a difference… The worries have been heightened by the coming of the Lunar New Year holiday rush, when millions of Chinese travel at home and abroad. Officials said it was too early to compare the new virus with SARS or MERS in terms of how lethal it might be. They attributed the spike in new cases to improvements in detection and monitoring.

From the NPR story: Researchers have conducted a controversial study that involved paying dozens of young women at a hospital near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to get artificially inseminated so their embryos could be flushed out of their bodies and analyzed for research purposes. The study showed that embryos created that way appear to be as healthy genetically as embryos created through standard in vitro fertilization. Physically, the embryos appear to, possibly, even be healthier, the study found…

In addition, some women underwent surgical or chemical abortions afterward, when tests indicated some of the embryos might not have been successfully removed. Some of the surviving embryos were later used to impregnate other women. Others were frozen.

This “experiment” was very wrong on at least four fronts.

First, it created human life for the purpose of experimenting upon it.

Second, it paid women to have abortions (when all the embryos were not flushed).

Third, it treated women as objects, merely as “a Petri dish,” to quote bioethicist Lorie Zoloth (with whom I have had my differences in the past, but not here).

Fourth, hyperstimulation can have serious side effects, even leading to occasional death. Add in the likelihood that the women were very poor, and you have a real exploitive circumstance.

My friend the bioethicist William Hurlbut, of Stanford, calls experiments such as this “outsourcing ethics,” that is, scientists conduct immoral or questionable studies out of the country that would probably not be allowed — or dared — to be pursued in the United States. But it all passed ethical muster, don’t you know!

The idea here is to create a new method for the fertility industry, in which women will be paid to mass-produce embryos within their bodies — surrogate conception, let’s call it — which will then be flushed out in the lab. After that, embryos will be subjected to quality control procedures — perhaps including sex selection. Those that pass quality control will be implanted in women who want to give birth or who become pregnant as surrogate “gestational carriers,” in the dehumanizing parlance of the industry. And all for big bucks.

Axios reported that Trump’s peace team is currently weighing whether it will release its long-awaited Israeli-Palestinian peace plan before the March elections, according to both US and Israeli sources who said Washington was in the midst of “intense deliberations.”

Officials told Axios there were several factors that would influence the decision, including developments in the president’s impeachment and conversations Kushner has with Middle Eastern and other world leaders during the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, and then with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem.

The event is one of the biggest political gatherings in Israel's history - President Macron of France, US Vice-President Mike Pence and Britain's Prince Charles are due to speak. It will also focus on fighting anti-Semitism today, taking place four days before the annual remembrance service at Auschwitz itself, hosted by Poland.

The Jerusalem event was organised by the World Holocaust Forum Foundation, whose founder Dr Moshe Kantor is close to Russia's President Vladimir Putin. Mr Duda complained that he has not been allowed to address the audience, whereas Mr Putin and other leaders will speak. He has also questioned why it is taking place at all, saying the "main event" will happen in his country - which Mr Putin in turn will not attend.

Trump's remarks were a clear swipe at 17-year-old Greta Thunberg who was sitting in the audience for his speech and had earlier chastised world and business leaders for 'doing nothing' to stop climate change. He then touted America's fossil fuel revolution in the form of shale gas and oil, inviting European leaders to invest.

In a swipe at the President's pledge to join the 'trillion trees' initiative, she said that it is no good planting trees across Africa 'while at the same time forests like the Amazon are being slaughtered at an infinitely higher rate'. I wonder, what will you tell your children was the reason to fail and leave them facing a climate chaos you knowingly brought upon them?' she asked.

Parroting her remarks from when she addressed the conference last year, she added: 'Our house is still on fire. Your inaction is fuelling the flames by the hour. 'We are still telling you to panic, and to act as if you loved your children above all else.' Meanwhile Trump insisted that technical innovation, not restricting economic growth, is the way forward. 'Fear and doubt is not a good thought process,' he said. 'This is not a time for pessimism but a time for optimism.'

Furious agricultural workers and farmers shut down roads across both Germany and Ireland in fear that environmental regulations are hurting their jobs. Thousands of farmers took part in the protest in Germany, as several hundred tractors blockaded main roads in Bavaria, Baden Württemberg and Bremen, as well as the German capital.

The Berlin mayor, Michael Müller, recognized that it was a "burden for Berlin," but "the farmers have their point of view”. He added that locals would "have to tolerate" the upheaval.

The rallies coincided with Berlin’s Green Week, a food and agricultural fair which starts on Friday, which has often attracted huge waves of protests in recent years. Placards accompanying the tractors read: "Don't forget that farmers feed you," "No farm, no food, no future" and "We are fed up!"