USA - Tucker Carlson, of Fox News fame, recently met with Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic in Budapest, Hungary. The journalist pointed out that the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline has put a serious strain on the European Union’s economy and mentioned that the world was “resetting” in reaction to the conflict in Ukraine and the West’s pledged support for Kiev. Carlson raises some good issues, and an important one to expand upon is the fact that the EU economy is lagging significantly since the outbreak of the war last year. A June piece by the Financial Times titled ‘Europe has fallen behind America and the gap is growing’ details how the EU is now considerably dependent on the US for its technological, security, and economic needs.

EUROPE - Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg has argued that Western politicians need to be more realistic in their attempts to isolate Russia, as the country will always be the European Union's neighbour and a key international player. Speaking on Monday at a panel discussion in Spain, Schallenberg cited the 20th Century German diplomat Egon Bahr, the architect of Ostpolitik – the policy of normalising relations with the East during the Cold War – who said: “America is irreplaceable, but Russia is unmovable”

SOUTH AFRICA - BRICS will become economically more powerful than the G7, the Russian president said in an address to the Johannesburg summit. The US dollar is losing its global role in an “objective and irreversible” process, the Russian president told participants at the BRICS Summit in South Africa on Tuesday. Vladimir Putin spoke via videolink, after choosing not to attend the event in person. De-dollarization is “gaining momentum” Putin declared, adding that members of the group of major emerging economies are seeking to reduce their reliance on the greenback in mutual transactions.

UK - Britain's high streets are enduring a scourge of shoplifting targeted by county lines-style gangs stealing items to order as thefts rise by more than a quarter in a year. Chain retailers and independent businesses are suffering from a crime epidemic fuelled by people struggling with food bills amid high inflation, experts say.Small gangs are 'hitting' stores in what the British Independent Retailers Association described as 'stealing to order' and compared to the county lines issue for drugs. More businesses are investing in CCTV but many smaller retailers cannot afford security guards and face all of their profits being wiped out by a successful theft. Reported retail thefts have now risen by 27 per cent across ten of the UK's largest cities - and were up by 68 per cent in some, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) said.

USA - There are reports circulating that colleges and offices are beginning to reinstate COVID mask mandates and contact tracing despite no new cases of the virus being reported. The Atlanta Journal 'Constitution' reported Monday that Morris Brown College, a black private liberal arts college has reinstated the measures as part of a “precautionary step.” The report notes that students and staff will all be asked to mask up while on campus, only one week after classes began.

USA - Amid all the talk of an imminent planetary catastrophe caused by emissions of carbon dioxide, another fact is often ignored: global greening is happening faster than climate change. The amount of vegetation growing on the earth has been increasing every year for at least 30 years. The evidence comes from the growth rate of plants and from satellite data. In 2016 a paper was published by 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries that analysed satellite data and concluded that there had been a roughly 14% increase in green vegetation over 30 years. The study attributed 70% of this increase to the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The lead author on the study, Zaichun Zhu of Beijing University, says this is equivalent to adding a new continent of green vegetation twice the size of the mainland United States.

GREECE - Firefighters made a horrifying discovery after battling a raging wildfire that has gripped northeastern Greece for four days. Eighteen bodies were found in the Avanta area of Alexandroupolis. Authorities are now probing whether these victims were migrants who might have entered the country via Turkey's nearby border. This shocking find comes as hundreds of firefighters battle numerous wildfires fuelled by strong winds across Greece. In the last 24 hours, two people lost their lives, and two firefighters were injured in separate incidents.

CANADA - Around 19,000 people have fled the area after fires broke out . Officials in Canada have declared a state of emergency as the "worst wildfire season ever" forced thousands of people to flee their homes. David Eby, the Premier of British Columbia, says the state of emergency means chiefs can impose travel restrictions. It comes as he pleads for people to avoid the central Interior and south-eastern parts of BC. Eby says access to emergency accommodation in Interior is "becoming increasingly tight" as more and more people are forced out of their homes.

CANARY ISLANDS - Spain heads the list of EU countries affected by wildfires so far this year, with 185,00 acres burned, according to the European Forest Fire Information System - with Spaniards warned to brace themselves for further searing temperatures. A wildfire raging on the popular UK tourist destination of Tenerife was started on purpose, police have confirmed, with 12,000 people evacuated since the blaze erupted on Tuesday. Speaking today, Canary Islands regional President Fernando Clavijo announced police have opened three lines of investigation - although he did not say whether there had been any arrests.

SOUTH AFRICA - From August 22nd to 24th, Johannesburg, South Africa, will become the center of the multipolar world, as the most relevant emerging economies of the planet – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – gather to hold its 15th summit. The BRICS group arrive at this new high-level meeting flexing its political and economic muscle, fielding dozens of applications from hopeful countries, and developing its economic structures to attempt a de-dollarization of the world’s economy.

SOUTH AFRICA - China plans to push for the BRICS bloc to become a full-fledged rival of the G7 during its upcoming summit in South Africa, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. The newspaper noted that there’s no agreement between Beijing and New Delhi on whether BRICS — which currently comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — should be a non-aligned economic club or a political force that openly challenges the West. In early August, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said Russia believes that “in one form or another, the expansion of BRICS will contribute to the further development and strengthening of this organization.”

GERMANY - Germany withdraws support for Ukraine as public anger reaches boiling point. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that due to the public’s lack of support for Ukraine, the German government would begin pulling back on its support for the Zelenskyy regime. Scholz addressed an event organized by the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper on Friday, and reporters asked him about the dangers of escalation in Ukraine, given Germany is supplying Kiev with weapons, including Leopard 2 battle tanks. Currently German officials are debating whether or not to supply Ukraine with long-range Taurus missiles, which Moscow would surely view as another major escalation. A new poll published Friday shows that the majority of Germans are against sending Taurus missiles, given the obvious risk of escalation with Russia.

USA - Panicking Californians were trapped in cars and climbed trees in bid to escape dangerous floodwaters and mudslides as Tropical Storm Hilary battered the state bringing down bridges and powerlines and leaving vehicles stranded on flooded roads. The first tropical storm to hit Southern California in 84 years brought havoc across the state, leaving 25 million people under flood warnings and schools to close today following fears of devastating destruction.

GUATEMALA - Authorities are on high alert as Guatemala’s Volcan de Fuego (Volcano of Fire) started erupting on Thursday. The volcano is continuing to display intense activity. This latest eruptive phase is classed as ‘strombolian activity,’ meaning it produces frequent eruptions, and began at 5.45 am local time on Thursday. The ash column reached 4,800 meters above sea level, and a lava flow of more than 2 km (1.2 miles) was reported. The volcanic explosions are causing rumblings, shock waves, lava flows and small pyroclastic flows, according to INSIVUMEH.

CANADA - Residents of western Canada scrambled to evacuate Saturday as raging wildfires encroached on two metropolitan areas – separate blazes that have sent tens of thousands fleeing over the course of just days. The devastating fires in British Columbia and the Northwest Territories are just the latest in a summer of dramatic wildfires across the country that have left millions of acres scorched. According to estimates, 19,000 people were evacuated from Yellowknife, the Northwest Territories' capital, over 48 hours, its environment minister Shane Thompson said late Friday. The city, home to some 20,000, was largely a ghost town following the largest ever evacuation from the region. More than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) south in British Columbia, fire also bore down on Kelowna, a city of 150,000 people in the Okanagan Valley.