UK - The agreement reached by the government of Prime Minister Theresa May to take the UK out of the EU has angered many supporters of Brexit, who are calling it a shameful surrender and betrayal of the 2016 referendum. After 10 Downing Street announced that most of May’s cabinet backed the deal she hammered out with Brussels and published the nearly 600-page document, advocates of a negotiated split from the EU were furious. Nigel Farage, former UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader called it “the worst deal in history” and urged any genuine Brexiteers in the cabinet to “resign or never be trusted again.”

USA - The United States has lost its military edge to a dangerous degree and could potentially lose a war against China or Russia, according to a report released Wednesday by a bipartisan commission that Congress created to evaluate the Trump administration's defense strategy. The National Defense Strategy Commission, comprised of former top Republican and Democratic officials selected by Congress, evaluated the Trump administration's 2018 National Defense Strategy, which ordered a vast reshaping of the US military to compete with Beijing and Moscow in an era of renewed great-power competition.

ISRAEL - Israel’s hawkish defence minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has announced he is resigning from the rightwing coalition government led by Benjamin Netanyahu in protest at a Gaza truce. Announcing his decision, Lieberman called Tuesday’s Egyptian-mediated deal with the Palestinian militant group Hamas “a capitulation to terror” and called for elections. “What happened yesterday – the truce combined with the process with Hamas – is a capitulation to terror. It has no other meaning,” Lieberman told journalists. “What we’re doing now as a state is buying short-term quiet, with the price being severe long-term damage to national security.” Lieberman has long demanded a more aggressive Israeli policy in Gaza, and his announcement follows the most intense round of fighting since the war in 2014.

USA - Home after home completely leveled, cars all burned to a crisp, everything in sight either gray rubble or black ash. This is the horrific portrait of devastation captured by new drone footage in Paradise, the Northern California town that was completely wiped out by the Camp Fire. The Camp Fire is now the deadliest and most destructive fire in the state's history, killing at least 48 people and destroying more than 6,500 homes and 260 buildings as it burned through more than 160,000 acres. After six days, the blaze only remains 35 percent contained and more than 200 people are still missing.  The new drone footage, obtained by ABC10, shows all that is left in Paradise, which was consumed so quickly by the Camp Fire that many victims didn't even have time to start their cars. Some bodies were found laying next to vehicles. 

USA - The pace at which things are changing is shocking the experts.  Just a few months ago, many of the experts were still talking about how the US economy was “booming”, but since then a major shift has taken place.  Most of the headlines have been about the huge stock market declines that we have been witnessing, but things have not been going well for the real economy either. 

EUROPE - Donald Trump has hit out at Emmanuel Macron with a volley of tweets saying the French were "starting to learn German in Paris" before US intervention in the world wars, rounding the attack off with a mocking plea to "MAKE FRANCE GREAT AGAIN!" Mr Trump began with an extraordinary attack on Emmanuel Macron’s call for a “European army” by likening a French defence rapprochement with Germany to the Nazi occupation of France.

AUSTRALIA - Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called out “radical, violent, extremist Islam that opposes our very way of life” the day after an Islamic State-inspired jihadist carried out a terror attack in Melbourne. He was immediately told to apologise by Muslim leaders. Somalian-born Hassan Khalif Shire Ali attacked bystanders with a knife on Friday, claiming the life of one person and injuring two others in an attack claimed by Islamic State.

EUROPE - Chancellor Angela Merkel should not have attended the Armistice Centenary because Germany lost the First World War, Alexander Gauland, the leader of the populist anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany (AfD), said. “We can’t put ourselves in a historical situation that clearly favours the winner and walk alongside Mr Macron through the Arc de Triomphe,” Mr Gauland said, according to Reuters.

USA - It is “cruel and unscientific” to define a person’s legal sex by their biology, says a pro-transgender complaint signed by 98 Democratic House legislators. The Democrats’ statement was sent to President Donald Trump’s administration after the New York Times reported that the administration will formally clarify that the sex of people involved in sex-discrimination legal fights will be based on their male or female body. Trump’s biology-determines-sex policy “makes it clear that members of this administration are willing to … solidify an archaic, dogmatic, and alarming view of the world,” the Democrats complain in their letter to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

UK - Earth should brace itself for a large earthquake in the coming days as planets in the solar system align and tug on Earth’s tectonic plates, as an earthquake forecaster predicts a tremor will strike between now and Thursday. This is because Venus, Uranus, Neptune, the Moon and Mars are all pulling on Earth. The gravitational pull of the celestial bodies either side of our planet could pull on Earth’s tectonic plates, according to the prediction. As the plates are tugged apart, they could cause earthquakes around the globe. The website also recently predicted major tremors over Christmas. According to Mr Hoogerbeets: “A very critical planetary configuration on 21 December 2018 is likely going to trigger a large earthquake between December 21 and 25, 2018. Current estimation is high 7 to 8 magnitude.”

UK - A third of the world's food is lost before it ever reaches anyone's plate, a panel of global experts has warned as it called for a war on waste to improve worldwide diets. Waste and spoilage in harvesting, storage, transport and shops accounts for an estimated 1.3 billion tonnes of food a year and squanders huge amounts of resources. At the same time, poor diet is now more of a threat to public health than infectious diseases like malaria and measles, the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition said. Food rich in nutrients vital for a healthy diet, such as fruit and vegetables, meat and fish, dairy products, and seeds and nuts is particularly prone to going off, or being wasted. The panel led by the UK's former chief scientific adviser, Sir John Beddington, estimated the value of wasted food reaches $1 trillion (£777 billion) each year.

ISRAEL - The first two Holy Temples of the Israeli city ceased to exist centuries ago, having been demolished at the hands of the Babylonians and later by the Romans. Despite multiple calls to rebuild the temple, they have remained largely unheard. Biblical conspiracy theorists have voiced a warning that the erection of a third Holy Temple in Jerusalem, which religious activists have recently called for, inevitably carries with it Jesus Christ’s imminent return.

EUROPE - France has launched a feverish campaign to shore up the euro before the next global downturn, warning that monetary union is not strong enough to withstand another crisis and faces disintegration without fiscal union. Bruno Le Maire, the French finance minister, said there are just weeks left for Germany and the Dutch-led "Hanseatic League" to grasp the nettle on long-delayed reforms. “Either we get a eurozone budget or there will eventually be no euro at all,” he said. “If there was a new financial and economic crisis tomorrow, the eurozone could not respond. It is really urgent that we build-up the eurozone’s defences. We have been talking for too long,” he told the Handelsblatt. “Time is running out...”

ISRAEL - Over 300 rockets rained down on southern Israel from Gaza on Monday. One 19-year-old is in critical condition after a rocket struck a bus in Kfar Aza; Magen David Adom reports 13 other casualties. In response, the IDF deployed fighter planes, helicopters and tanks in Gaza and killed three Palestinians, striking over 70 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets. Hamas announced that the rockets were a retaliation against Sunday's botched IDF operation in Gaza that saw the death of seven Hamas terrorists. Hundreds of Red Alert sirens rang out across Israel, including one as far as the Dead Sea.

ISRAEL - The guns of a possible Israel-Gaza war were fired less than 12 hours after church bells rang out throughout Paris at 11 am on Sunday to commemorate the moment when the guns of World War I became silent exactly a century ago. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had come to Paris to celebrate the 100th anniversary of that peace, cut his trip short after an IDF military operation gone awry rekindled violence with Hamas.