UK - It was February when the lorries arrived, crawling in convoy under police escort from the port of Bristol. Their cargo: three wind turbine blades, each 60 metres long; four sections of steel tower, weighing 80 tonnes apiece; and the generator, which, hoisted 92 metres above the ground, would transform the air whistling down the Bristol Channel into 4.2 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 3,000 homes. “They turned up exactly on the day we had booked them for, a year in advance,” said Charles Gamble, managing director of Community Power Solutions in Bristol, which spearheaded the project. “It came from Enercon, a company in Germany. They put the tower up in a day, the generator and its housing the next day, and the blades on the next day.” They may go up quickly, but that single turbine, owned by the community of Lawrence Weston in north Bristol, was the only one erected anywhere in England in the whole of 2023.

USA - The failed coverup of Biden's patently dire condition discredits everyone close to the White House – including his Vice President. And it's still ongoing. Biden should resign immediately. Every day he stays in office, Kamala and her West Wing co-conspirators are still complicit. Who do they think they're fooling? By dropping out of the 2024 race, Biden has finally admitted that his age and his apparent decline prohibit him from fulfilling the job of president one day longer. He wasn't even able to face the cameras to declare his withdrawal on Sunday, instead sending in his notice via a letter posted in a Tweet. Even aged 96, Queen Elizabeth II showed up to greet a new British prime minister two days before she died. 81-year-old Joe can't match that – and the guard has now changed without him showing face. How utterly humiliating.

USA - Working- and middle-class Americans are competing for jobs against more than 30 million migrants, including legal immigrants, visa workers, and illegal aliens, the Pew Research Center revealed. The latest from the Pew Research Center shows that as of 2022, more than 30 million legal immigrants and illegal aliens were in the United States and holding American jobs — a 20-percent increase over the last 15 years. More specifically, the number of legal immigrants alone who were holding American jobs as of 2022 increased by almost 30 percent since 2007. Meanwhile, during the same 15-year period, the number of native-born Americans who have been added to the United States workforce has increased by less than 10 percent.

USA - Americans continue to express complex views about human origins, with a majority believing God played at least some role but also a majority believing humans evolved from less advanced forms of life. Though diminished from the early 2000s, the largest segment of Americans, 37%, are creationist purists, saying God created humans in their present form within the past 10,000 years. Twenty-four percent of US adults accept the scientific theory of evolution, that humans evolved from less advanced forms of life over millions of years without God’s involvement. One in three, 34%, straddle both theories, saying humans evolved, but with God’s guidance.

YEMEN - Leaders of the Iran-backed Yemeni terrorist group Ansarullah, commonly known as the Houthis, threatened unnamed Arab states on Tuesday with an “answer” to their alleged cooperation with neighboring Israel, part of a larger statement of belligerence promising “unprecedented” attacks on Israel. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) struck Houthi strongholds in Yemen for the first time this weekend in response to the terrorists bombing a residential community in Tel Aviv, a significant escalation in the conflict between the country and the terrorists.

CANADA - Out-of-control wildfires near the Canadian town of Jasper have forced more than 25,000 to flee one of the country’s largest national parks as multiple blazes and thick smoke descended on the Rocky Mountain community. Officials in the province of Alberta ordered residents of the Jasper townsite to leave immediately on Monday night, and soon after they called for the park, more than 4,200 sq miles (10,900 sq km) in size, to be fully cleared out. The town is home to 5,000 full-time residents, alongside 5,000 seasonal workers. The park also had roughly 15,000 visitors at the time. Heavy smoke and fire cut off key escape routes, forcing evacuees towards neighbouring British Columbia. There are currently 170 fires in Alberta and 316 in British Columbia.

CHAGOS ISLANDS - Located in a remote region of the Indian Ocean, the largest of the Chagos Islands, Diego Garcia, is home to a strategically important UK military base which has been leased to the United States. Britain’s centuries-old sovereignty of the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar will be undermined if new Foreign Secretary David Lammy turns his back on a remote archipelago in the Indian Ocean, ex-minister Sir Robert Buckland has claimed. The Chagos Islands, officially known as the British Indian Ocean Territory or BIOT, consists of a group of seven atolls comprising about 60 islands, located roughly 300 miles from the Maldives.

UK - Keir Starmer paid his own tribute to Joe Biden after the president announced he would not be contesting November’s election after all. “I respect President Biden’s decision and I look forward to us working together during the remainder of his presidency,” the prime minister wrote on X. “I know that, as he has done throughout his remarkable career, he will have made his decision based on what he believes is best for the American people.” Starmer and the president held one-to-one talks at the White House following the Nato summit in Washington, after which Starmer described Biden as having been “on good form” – a diplomatic white lie that is entirely forgivable in the circumstances. Still, as Starmer watches the enfolding political drama from across the Atlantic, he will be seriously contemplating how his government would deal with a Trump administration from next January.

USA - Kamala Harris has said she is looking forward to “formally accepting the [presidential] nomination” of the Democratic party after she earned enough support from delegates including hundreds from her native California. “When I announced my campaign for President, I said I intended to go out and earn this nomination,” she said in a statement late Monday. “Tonight, I am proud to have secured the broad support needed to become our party’s nominee, and as a daughter of California, I am proud that my home state’s delegation helped put our campaign over the top. I look forward to formally accepting the nomination soon.” Speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi made the motion to endorse Harris for president at a virtual meeting of California’s DNC delegation on Monday evening, a spokesperson confirmed.

USA - The biggest abortion rights groups in US politics are lining up behind Kamala Harris’s bid for president, a show of faith in a politician who has already become the face of the White House’s fight over abortion rights – which is not only one of the election’s biggest issues but one of the few where Democrats have the advantage. Within hours of Joe Biden’s stunning announcement on Sunday that he would drop out of the presidential race and endorse the vice-president, Emilys List, which champions Democratic women who support abortion rights, and Reproductive Freedom for All, which advocates for abortion access and was previously known as Naral Pro-Choice America, officially endorsed Harris. Emilys List plans to pour at least $20 million into the race in support of Harris. Two-thirds of the voters who describe abortion as their most important issue say it should be legal in all or most cases. The voters who think it should be legal in all cases tend to be Democratic, Black, female or between the ages of 18 and 29.

EUROPE - Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is the only EU leader retaining ties with Vladimir Putin in light of the unlawful Russian invasion of Ukraine. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been punished by Brussels for his self-styled "peace mission" to Russia, heavily criticised by most EU leaders across the bloc. Hungary assumed the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union on July 1 and is set to retain the role until the end of the year. This position would normally give the country the right to host a meeting of foreign and defence ministers to discuss the global issues and foreign policy decisions awaiting the bloc. But the EU's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has stripped Mr Orban of this privilege. Now, the event set to take place between August 28 and 30 will happen in Brussels instead of Budapest.

USA - Furious Democrats and Republicans peppered the embattled Cheatle with questions about how would-be assassin Thomas Crooks, 20, was able to open fire on the former president and told her to resign. She avoided directly answering questions about whether she denied Trump a bigger protection detail, whether she focused on diversity and inclusivity during hiring, and doubled down on not having an agent on the gunman's roof during the brutal hearing on Capitol Hill. In a staggering moment, Cheatle also admitted that her agents on the ground had been warned between two and five times how many times a 'suspicious person' was reported before Trump took the stage.

USA - A Republican has deemed Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle a 'DEI horror show' as she took attacks from both sides of the aisle on Monday during a Capitol Hill hearing. During questioning from lawmakers, Cheatle offered few straight answers and often hid behind the ongoing Secret Service internal probe. She remained obstinate amid calls to resign from both Republicans and Democrats. Cheatle could not answer the number of agents on the ground, how the shooter got on the roof, how many shots were fired, how many casings were recovered, the shooter's motive and other questions from lawmakers. She could not tell lawmakers how many times there had been security breaches of Secret Services protectees or provide a timeline of the day of the shooting and when Secret Service had been made aware of the threat.

USA - Announcements of this magnitude are typically presaged with an alert to the media. Early reports are that Biden's top campaign staff didn't know about the letter, with a handful told just one minute before someone pushed 'publish'. It all raises more questions. Such as: Who wrote it? When was it drafted? Was it his decision alone, or was he coereced? Why didn't Biden, like LBJ before him, announce his monumental decision to stand down during a primetime televised address from the Oval? Is he that far gone — unable to read prepared marks from a teleprompter?

USA - Joe Biden has become the first president in 56 years to call off his campaign for re-election, brought down by a disastrous performance in his late June debate against Republican nominee Donald Trump that caused a marked decline in his public support, and sparked a pressure campaign by his fellow Democrats to convince him to bow out. The president announced his decision on Twitter/X, as well as his support for Kamala Harris to take his place. The vice-president replied that “my intention is to earn and win this nomination”, while Democratic chair Jaime Harrison said “the party will undertake a transparent and orderly process” to find a new candidate.