When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., disinvited President Trump from delivering the State of the Union on its originally scheduled date, Jan. 29, the White House and Republicans in Congress brainstormed about what to do. Should Trump travel somewhere, such as the U.S.-Mexico border, and give his speech there? Should he show up at the Capitol on the 29th and demand to speak? Should he deliver the address in writing, as it was for many years of the nation's history?

Fortunately for Trump, none of those ideas passed muster. Then, when the partial government shutdown was temporarily resolved, the speaker relented and invited the president to appear Feb. 5. Trump agreed, which to some Republicans seemed like a surrender but was in fact a wise decision. Trump realized that there simply was no equally good alternative to delivering the State of the Union from the House chamber, with most of the United States government gathered inside and millions watching not only on the cable news channels but the broadcast entertainment networks, too.

That was especially true with the issue that sparked the shutdown - Trump's proposal for a barrier along some parts of the southern border - still unresolved. A House-Senate conference committee has a little more than a week to come to an agreement over the barrier, or the government could well shut down again. With both sides dug in, the State of the Union was Trump's best chance to make his case to the American people that the barrier should be part of a broader border policy. Trump had already tried a prime-time address to the nation, on Jan. 8, and failed to move the needle. The State of the Union was his last chance.

But it was also a chance to make a much bigger case - a case for the results Trump has achieved during his presidency and his agenda for the rest of his term. And Trump made the best of that chance.

Translated by Scott Humor and captioned by Leo.

We have discovered that Russia has been waging a secret, carefully concealed war for the past 7 years. It is a war against corruption and unfair income distribution. You find this hard to believe? We will tell you in detail immediately after the selection of positive news of the week.

The EU's on-again/off-again Copyright Directive keeps sinking under its own weight: on the one side, you have German politicians who felt that it was politically impossible to force every online platform to spend hundreds of millions of euros to buy copyright filters to prevent a user from infringing copyright, even for an instant, and so proposed tiny, largely cosmetic changes to keep German small businesses happy; on the other side, you have French politicians who understand that the CEOs of multinational entertainment companies won't stand for any compromise, or even the appearance of compromise, and so the process fell apart.

That is until Chancellor Merkel and President Macron sat down to broker a deal, in which Merkel caved on every single measure that even looked like it might protect small businesses, co-operatives, nonprofits, and individuals, ending up with a deal that guarantees that every existing small platform will be destroyed and no new ones can be started, leaving Europe in the hands of US Big Tech -- forever.

U.S. Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren identified herself as an "American Indian" in hand-writing on her 1986 registration card for the State Bar of Texas, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

The disclosure marks the latest twist in a controversy surrounding Warren and her claims to Native American ancestry as she raises money and hires staff ahead of an expected formal launch to her 2020 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The yellow registration card, which is dated April 1986, was filled out in blue ink and signed by Warren, the Post reported.

A photograph of the card posted online by the newspaper shows that Warren listed the university and law school she attended. On a line listed for race Warren wrote "American Indian."

Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz is calling for fairness in punishment to those who lie to Congress, singling out former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey, former Attorney General Eric Holder, and several others.

Introducing a resolution this week, Gaetz pointed out a longtime ally to President Donald Trump, Roger Stone - who pleaded not guilty after he was arrested for five counts of lying to Congress - while others go unpunished, according to the Washington Examiner.

On a Sunday morning in December, the future arrived in Torzhok, a sleepy town about 155 miles (250 kilometers) northwest of Moscow. It came in the form of an electric locomotive resembling a bright red caterpillar, chugging along through snow-covered forests toward the town of 50,000.

There were only a dozen passengers on the inaugural journey of the train, dubbed the Lastochka-which is Russian for swallow. Among them was Tatyana Sokolova, an entrepreneur and one of a growing number of players rushing to redevelop cities across the country-including Torzhok, her hometown.

Over the past decade or so, Vladimir Putin has managed to stay popular at home through adventures abroad: invading Ukraine, bombing Syria and bragging about new weapons systems that could threaten America. Recently, however, a sluggish economy and self-inflicted pension crisis have taken their toll, pushing his numbers downward. But a bright spot remains for the Russian president-a quiet component of his domestic policies that's kept his approval rating from falling even further.

5Stars leader has been a vocal champion of the street movement.

Luigi Di Maio, leader of Italy's 5Star Movement and deputy prime minister, on Tuesday met with leaders of the Yellow Jackets in Paris, and the two sides agreed to touch base again in Rome, according to a statement issued by the 5Stars in the European Parliament.

The statement said Di Maio and 5Star MP Alessandro Di Battista met Christophe Chalençon, a leader of the Yellow Jackets movement who is associated with a list of candidates planning to run in May's European Parliament election called the Référendum d'Initiative Citoyenne (RIC).

US president Donald Trump's statement of his intention to remain in Iraq in order to "be looking a little bit at Iran because Iran is a real problem" has created a political storm in Mesopotamia among local politicians and groups now determined to put an end to the US presence in the country. Many are upset by Trump's statement, saying that the "US forces are departing from their initial mission to fight terrorism, the reason for which they are allowed to stay in Iraq". Iraqi President Barham Saleh commented that the US administration did not ask Iraq's permission for US troops stationed in the country to "watch Iran".

US forces have been deployed in Iraq in large numbers since 2014 when ISIS occupied a third of the country. The US establishment under president Obama refrained from rushing to support the Iraqi government, leaving room for Iran to act rapidly and send weapons and military advisors to Baghdad and Erbil. The intentionally slow US reaction pushed the Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Sistani to call for the mobilisation of the population, a call that led to the creation of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), called Hashd al-Shaabi, who managed to stop ISIS's advance.

Furious Labour Remainers turned on Jeremy Corbyn today after his hostility to the EU was laid bare in a newly-unearthed video.

In the extraordinary footage, the veteran left-winger attacks the Brussels club, branding it a 'European empire of the 21st century' and a 'military Frankenstein'.

The film, dating from 2009, was seized on by Mr Corbyn's own mutinous MPs as evidence that he was always going to 'facilitate Brexit'. Critics also again questioned whether Mr Corbyn really voted Remain in the 2016 referendum, as he claimed.

Obtained by Left-wing website The Red Roar, the video shows Mr Corbyn mocking the concept of holding repeated votes on the same issue.

He was addressing an audience of Irish activists the year after the country rejected the Lisbon Treaty by 53.4 per cent to 46.6 per cent.

Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine's pro-Russia former president, has again rejected his conviction by a Ukrainian court on charges of high treason over attempts to quash a 2014 pro-Western uprising known as the Maidan protests.

Speaking at the Moscow headquarters of Russia's state-run Rossiya Segodnya media agency, Yanukovych told journalists on February 6 that the verdict and 13-year prison sentence against him at his trial in absentia was "written on the instructions of the [Ukrainian] authorities."

He said pressure on the Kyiv court had been "unprecedented."

Judge Vladyslav Devyatko, of Kyiv's Obolon district court, announced the Kyiv court's January 24 ruling that Yanukovych "committed a crime against the foundation of Ukraine's national security" and was found guilty of "complicity in waging an aggressive war against Ukraine."