Donald Trump has been busy with his pardoning pen, issuing clemency and pardoning various convicted criminals seemingly at random and at will. Some of those people seem, at first glance, to be perhaps less deserving of such generosity than would be expected. But is there rhyme or reason to all this? Perhaps...

This is not the first Coronavirus rodeo. The family of viruses from which the current 2019 novel Coronavirus sprang has several endemic, non-threatening variants, and two very, very big siblings, SARS and MERS. So while you should probably take any government assurance that there's no trouble and everything is ok with a pinch of salt (or in the case of a totalitarian government, a whole mine full of the stuff), Coronaviruses themselves aren't as scary as they look right now. Mostly.

It was Brexit Day, on Friday. The United Kingdom today is finally no longer a member of the European Union, and it feels strange. It feels wrong. We face, we're told, an uncertain future. That's not something anyone should say with any ease or confidence, but here we are, in the triumph of the uncertainties, with flag waving revellers treating the advent of Brexit like a football away trip.

The biggest scandal in the history of rugby, at least here in what we call the Home Nations is rolling onwards, and with a huge development over the weekend. Saracens rugby club, winners of multiple recent trophies at home and in Europe have accepted automatic relegation from the Premiership as punishment for their repeated breaches of the salary cap imposed by the league. But this does not end here, the consequences will roll on, to Leinster next, where Saracens play in the European Cup, and to the Championship where Saracens will play next week, and out into rugby as a community.

Extinction Rebellion is probably a group you know about, and the chances are you already have opinions on them. That's ok, no worries. But they're being policed in here in the UK in a manner that you might not be ok with, regardless of your political opinions on them. A Storm Brendan studio live episode.

Last night a storm blew itself out over the UK. Can we hope that the same happened metaphorically, in the Middle East? Iran gave us the best possible chance of that happening last night, in its attack on US bases. But surely it's too soon to hope, with Donald Trump involved...

The reality is stark: America attacked and killed Iraqi military personnel. There is an appropriately large emphasis on Iran at the moment, and its reaction to recent American actions. But America didn't only attack Iran. It also killed the personnel of Iraq, its regional host, its ostensible ally, and the nation it has been claiming to nurture in a post-Saddam democratic nation building exercise.

So, Donald Trump probably committed a war crime already. No matter how bad someone is, assassinating them in peace time is probably completely illegal. Unfortunately if you were holding out hope that this situation wasn't going to go in an outright illegal direction, Trump set things straight over the weekend by assuring us that yes, war crimes are his stated intention.

Today a man was killed, on the orders of President Donald Trump. The man was an Iranian General, in charge of that country's paramilitary overseas asymmetric warfare group, the Quds Force. Why did it happen, why now, and why does this kind of thing happen so rarely? Assassination, openly and proudly committed, is a very rare thing in the world of modern states. Will there be World War Three?

Well, it's January, and time to be nice to our livers and try to right the listing ship of our poor, overworked bodies after the holiday season. It's good to quit alcohol for a while, and give yourself a rest. But what about all the good things alcohol does for us? Did you think about them?